


A forest spirit

by SomebodyWeird



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Dragons, Fantasy, Forest Spirits, Gen, Magic, No Romance, No romo, Original work - Freeform, dragon - Freeform, forest spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 43,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28387002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomebodyWeird/pseuds/SomebodyWeird
Summary: A young forest spirit manages to stumble upon a human adventurer and is pulled along on a mission to find and kill a dragon striking fear into the town nearby. Once she meets said dragon... She doesn't want to kill it anymore.
Kudos: 1





	1. The beginning

It was a peaceful afternoon. Robin was just sitting by the riverside, listening to the water’s gentle flow. Her elf-like ears twitched when a louder sound hit them: A twig breaking. Robin opened her previously closed eyes, revealing black sparkling orbs, and looked at the source of the sound. It was a small fox that she knew well. It had befriended her a few months ago and hadn’t stopped following Robin since. The spirit had named him Fluff, for his incredibly fluffy tail.

Fluff jumped closer, urgently signalling in a direction with his paw and nose. Robin, like other forest spirits, had a talent for communicating with animals, young as she was. With barely thirty years of experience under her belt, she stood up from her comfy spot by the riverside and followed Fluff to a small clearing. Fluff stopped just before reaching the clearing, hiding behind a bush with a small squeak, which was understandable considering that a group of humans was on the other side of said clearing, shouting at one another and swinging their weapons at a tree golem. It must have looked rather threatening to the small fox. Clearly, Fluff wanted Robin to do something about it since nearby animals must have been scared off too. The golem was taller than the humans, reaching two meters with its long legs. It was vaguely human-shaped, but its fingers were a little too long and its skin seemed to be replaced with smooth tree bark. The spirit’s eyes were a cutting shade of green and its hair long, almost reaching the grass, but not quite. The dark brown hair swung every time the spirit moved and made Robin wonder if it was uncomfortable to fight with hair that long.

Robin frowned. It had always bothered her that humans came to the forest just to kill otherwise harmless beings living there, but she knew well that if a spirit lost control, it’d be nearly impossible to regain it. Once aggravated, other spirits were deadly to even her if she wasn’t careful. And she was a forest spirit, protected by nature’s touch, essentially immortal. Well, she hadn’t really tried to see how many injuries her body could sustain before she died for real, but she’d survived a fall off a 40-meter cliff with barely a scratch, so she felt she was pretty safe.

And thus Robin walked out of the bushes with a sigh, deciding to assist the human to some extent, and sent a well calculated offensive rock spell at the tree spirit raging in the clearing. The group of humans barely noticed her presence from further away, so she continued sending attacks that barely did any damage in order to see how long the tree spirit could keep fighting before running out of energy. It didn’t seem to affect the spirit much, so Robin conjured up a bigger, sharper rock and sent it in the spirit’s direction. The rock pierced through one of the spirit’s arms, sending it to the ground with a howl. Robin grit her teeth. She never liked seeing others in pain, but Robin couldn’t see any other options. Unless dealt with, the spirit would deal more damage to the forest than she could allow.

It was at this time that one of the humans finally decided to see where the sharp rock had actually come from. After all, rocks don’t fly at raging tree spirits on their own. The rest of the team - Robin counted 3 people - were busy taking down the spirit. Now that it was on the forest floor, the humans had a much easier time with it. Robin gave a nod to assure herself that her job here was done, and walked back to the bushes to continue with her daily doings. 

☯

“Mona, for the thousandth time, stop staring off into the distance and help us!”

“Huh- Oh! Sorry, Nyx!” Mona readied her bow and took another shot at the creature that had attacked her team. It was a bit harder now that it was rolling around on the ground with her teammates gathered all around it. The arrow she shot ended up stuck in the wooden leg of the being. She would’ve felt bad about it, but the creature had attacked them literally out of nowhere and her party leader, Nyx the swordsman, had decided to take on the challenge of the fight. Her attention turned back to the other side of the clearing as soon as she was out of immediate danger, looking for any sign of the person she’d seen there just moments ago. Nothing. “Ah… Sora,” she cursed. Mona spent a few more seconds staring at the clearing in disappointment before turning her attention back to the battle at hand. 

“Got it!” Nyx cheered, dealing a final blow to the creature’s knee. It lay suddenly limp, now resembling more a fallen tree than a beast. “Good work!” he said to Mona’s two other teammates. The party consisted of four people in total. Mona was the one with range; the archer. Nyx had the role of leader and close-range fighter. Evelyn was their party’s mage, dealing damage from a medium range and also healed smaller wounds. Firo, the final member, wielded a battleaxe. His most outstanding quality was the red, enchanted axe that he carried with him everywhere.

After a few seconds of staring into space, Mona caught herself staring at Nyx. “...Sorry. I just thought I saw someone. No, I’m pretty sure I did. There was a big rock that none of us could have used to attack-”

“Whatever. Just don’t stand like an idiot again. It’s not like you at all. We need you to contribute in battle, yeah?”

“Aye.”

“Let’s head on then. We came here for that four-eyed fish and we’ll get a good reward for it.”

☯

Robin had been into town only a handful of times. It was never for long, only twenty or thirty minutes at a time, but she couldn’t help it. Humans were so strange. They almost always moved in groups and exchanged goods, lived all huddled together in such a small area and some even ventured out to the forest, though not for land or some other noble cause; they were out to kill its inhabitants! They were greedy, Robin could see, and confident in their superiority. Or, at least, most of them were. Except this one time a small child offered her a flower, which was sweet, so she supposed smaller humans were friendlier than the rest. Still, her picture of humans had never felt fully complete. So here she was, gathering her courage to get up from the bush and walk out into the sunlight, onto the stone road, and into the protective walls of this city that lay ahead.

_ “Go on, Robin. You can do it. They won’t kick you out, you’ve seen other non-humans in there before. Just get up, like a good girl, and walk around the bush- Yes, like this! Yes, now onto the stone- ON the stone, not around it!”  _ As she stepped off the soft dirt and onto the harsh polished cobblestone road to the city gate, she felt her legs wobble ever so slightly. Robin kept walking, reaching the city gates over the small bridge in no time. The guards by the entrance looked menacing, but let her pass with nothing but a closer look at her antlers. She was in. A few minutes of walking down the stone pathway led her to the town square. It was a big, flat area, free of buildings, that had all sorts of stalls around the edges and a fountain in the middle. Robin headed over to a merchant offering apples, steadily breathing and assuring herself that the crowd of around 100 people didn’t care about her presence.

“Hello!” Robin said with a tiny and awkward wave.

“Well, hello dear!” The old lady sitting behind the stall stood up to greet her. “Aren’t you an oddity! First time in town?” she asked, noting the spirit’s antlers.

“Not quite, but I don’t come here that often,” Robin explained, feeling a tiny bit safer now that the woman had shown friendliness and not anger or fear at the sight of her antlers.

“Well, I hope you enjoy your time here! What can I do ya for?” The lady smiled warmly.

“I was just looking around, thank you,” Robin replied shyly.

“Of course, dearie. Just be careful. Some suspicious folk have been sighted around lately.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, thank you!” Robin gave a short bow and moved on to have a closer look at the fountain.

☯

_ “How did I end up here?”  _ Robin truly had no idea how she ended up in an old building, waiting in a line for… something. She didn’t know what. She was walking around outside one moment, and then suddenly she was pulled in, people standing behind her in a short line.  _ “What even is this place?”  _ She could see counters that young women were standing behind, clothed in green robes. And before she knew it, it was her turn in front of one of the counters.

“Welcome to the Adventurer's Guild! Are you here to sign up?” the woman asked in a cheery tone. She was blonde, with long curly hair and sparkling green eyes a couple shades darker than Robin’s own hair. Robin didn’t really know how to reply, so she decided to just nod in agreement with anything that the woman proposed. “Great! I’ll just need you to fill out this form right here, can you do it yourself or shall I just ask you the questions?”

“Whatever is quicker?” Robin asked, wanting to get out of there already. The woman nodded and started running through the questions: “Name?”

“Robin.”

“Last name?”

“Uhh… Woods?” Robin offered. That was one name she could at least remember. The woman behind the counter scratched away on a piece of parchment. “Birthday and age?”

“Uh-” Robin was caught off guard, seeing as she was obviously older than she looked to be, since spirits barely aged visibly. And now she needed a date. Great.  _ “Make one up!”  _ “Um- May the uhh- May the fifth,” she managed to say, doing her best to burn the date into her mind. “And age?” the woman pressed on. Robin stayed silent. “If I was 14-?”

“14 it is. Class?” the woman continued. Robin stared, confused. “What?”

“What type of fighting do you prefer?” the woman explained patiently. “Magic? Short sword? Longsword? Battleaxe? Bow? The list goes on.”

“...Is there a mix of magic and using a small sword?” Robin asked curiously. That would suit her style of magic and blade pretty well.

“Warrior mage, preferred weapon: short sword,” the lady summarised.

“Thank you,” Robin sighed gratefully. This was exhausting. So many choices. It continued for a little more before she was directed to another lady. By this point, Robin just wanted to get out of there and go home.

“You’re Robin Woods?” Another woman, this time in yellow clothing, walked up to her. After Robin confirmed her identity with a nod, she started walking to the other side of the room. “After me! We will conduct the ranking.” “R-ranking?” Robin was now even more confused. What did they have to rank? The lady didn’t stop for a moment, continuing to walk to a small crystal orb by the wall. “Please touch this orb, we will determine your magic ranking with it.” Robin, having no choice but to obey, set her hand down on the strange orb. It glowed brightly and the woman started scribbling on a piece of parchment, just as the other lady had. “It looks like a steady glow, does it give off warmth?” She hovered her hand near the surface of the orb. “A little. I’d say you’re pretty high on magic supply, good choice of class!”

“T-thank you.” Robin retracted her hand. “Can I go now?”

“Just a second more and we’ll have your guild card made. It’s a certificate that shows you’re registered. Then you’re free to go on quests and adventures!” the lady replied brightly and walked off, back to the counter to talk to the other girls there.

“Thank you?” Robin stood by the orb awkwardly, waiting for the woman to come back. It took a few minutes, but her certificate was eventually handed to her by a third worker and Robin rushed out of the building and back home, shoving the cardlike piece of wood behind her ear. With her hair, it was pretty well hidden and for some reason, nothing ever fell when she put it there - she had tested it out with a few sticks and cliff dives. Into water, of course. Robin concluded it must be some sort of magic, keeping whatever she put behind her long ears in its chosen spot.

Robin sped away from the town square, out the gates, off the stone bridge, behind the bushes, and then walked all the way to her favourite tree near the river. She often spent her nights in its hollow trunk, listening to the water flow. She hurried to her tree, curling up inside it cosily. It wasn’t a big tree, but it was hollow on the inside and Robin used the comfy spot as her home of sorts. The fact that it was still light outside didn't matter to her at all; she went straight to sleep. Today had been exhausting.

☯

The fluffball in her lap was a surprise to Robin when she woke up, but it wasn’t totally unexpected. Fluff often came to sleep near her, it just seems that today he decided to snuggle up. Robin understood since the nights were slowly getting colder and colder as days went by. Last week had been pretty windy as well, Robin had noticed. 

It was early morning, the sun wasn’t yet up, birds were silent. Only some bugs were roaming around as well as a few owls. The forest was quieter than usual, but the gentle flow of water continued as usual. Robin carefully manoeuvred out of the tree’s hollow trunk without waking Fluff and stretched a bit on the mossy grass. Robin took a deep breath of fresh air, enjoying the refreshing-  _ “Wait. Is that the smell of blood?”  _

Robin’s mind blanked.  _ “I can smell blood, why can I smell blood? Plants don’t have blood. An animal? Of course, it must be an injured animal.”  _ Calming herself a little, Robin started looking around in the darkness, trying to find the source of the horrid smell. It didn’t take long to stumble into an oddly soft piece of wood. “Ah-” Robin jumped back. She hadn’t expected to bump into anything on the riverside, since it was usually pretty clear, just the smooth pebbles on the shore. And a few bigger rocks that she knew lay a little bit further ahead of her. She squatted down to see what she had found and, sure enough, the smell of blood doubled instantly. Robin carefully examined the thing to see what sort of animal it was, since it had to be an animal, right?  _ "Long limbs, medium body, small head and no hair. Mostly. Other than the head,"  _ Robin analysed, not saying a word.  _ "-wait! It's a human!" _ She had found a human.

Robin didn't know who the human was, or why they were even by the riverside, bleeding, but she decided to help out. The human seemed to still be breathing, though faintly, which wasn't ideal but at least they were alive. Robin took a hold of its arms and started pulling them away from the water, getting them to the grass. Just then she remembered about light, which she could've used long ago. A simple light spell had her hand glowing lightly in seconds. Robin continued to examine the human, determining the injury to be on their stomach. By the length of the hair - not reaching past shoulders - and the shoulder width and lack of bust size Robin was able to determine that this was a male human and a young adult. A few simple spells had the man's wound - it looked like he was stabbed! - healing, skin slightly stitching together at a pace faster than what was natural. Robin decided that now would be an ideal time to wake Fluff.

She navigated back to her hollow tree and peeked in, slightly stretching her still glowing hand further inside. "Fluff. Wake up please," she said lightly, almost whispering. The sleeping fox yawned at first, unrolling itself from the curled position it had been sleeping in, before opening its eyes. Fluff looked at Robin curiously. "I need to show you something. Follow me," Robin said to the fox, moving away from the tree and towards the human lying near the river. Fluff, somewhat confused, followed after Robin varily.

Robin didn't say anything when they arrived, just stretching her torch of a hand towards the man in the grass. Fluff had a look and turned back to Robin.  _ "Such intelligence. Foxes truly are smart,"  _ Robin thought to herself. “I found him this morning by the river. Keep an eye out for other humans, please?” Robin requested. The fox huffed with a small smirk, rushing off into the nearby bushes just moments later. Robin sighed.  _ “Sometimes I wonder how animals convey so much emotion without facial expressions,”  _ she thought, turning her gaze back to the human laying on the ground. He still hadn’t woken up. Robin didn’t know how long it would take, but it would probably be best if she was nearby when the human woke up. She set herself down near the river, listening to the water flow as it got lighter outside. Eventually, she cancelled the spell that kept her hand glowing, closing her eyes as she lay down to listen to the sounds of water flowing and birds slowly waking up and singing as the Sun rose. There, in the relative silence, enjoying the sounds of nature, Robin fell asleep.

She woke up to a groan. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but when she opened her eyes, it was very light outside. Much lighter than it had been when she had fallen asleep. Robin got up from the ground, leaning her body weight onto her arms as she turned around to look at the human she was laying next to. The man was a few meters away from her, now twisting in the grass. Robin crawled closer, not bothering to stand up and walk properly. “Get up. You’ve slept long enough.” The human just turned to his other side, still laying down, eyes closed. Robin let out a sigh as she stood up from the grass. She walked to the human, nudging him with her foot. “You sure you’re alive? You were pretty close to death when I found you you know.” The man, now seemingly registering that somebody else was there and they were addressing him, now opened his eyes, but immediately flinched back. “Ugh- Who’re you?” he asked, trying to get used to the sudden light. It took him a good minute, but he eventually managed to open his eyes and have a proper look around. Robin stared. “You’re in the forest. I found you by the river last night. You were bleeding pretty bad, but I patched you up a little. Pretty sure you’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

“Well- Thank you?” The human was seemingly confused. He was switching between looking at Robin’s eyes and her antlers. Robin was annoyed. “What is it?”

“It’s just that- What exactly are you?”

“I,” Robin said, staring off into the distance instead, “am a forest spirit. And you don’t belong here in the forest, so, naturally, you caught my eye. Now it’s my turn to ask. Why were you bleeding by the riverside?”

“I’m pretty sure I was fighting with someone near a river? And then they stabbed me. Wait-” The man hurried to check over his wound, finding it mostly healed already. It had stopped bleeding a long time ago, but the man’s clothes were still smeared brown - the blood had dried quite a while ago. Robin gave him a look. “I said I healed you, but if you rip it open again it’s your own fault. My healing isn’t the best, but it got the bleeding to stop and I consider it a win,” she commented drily. The man nodded. “Thank you. I’d like to know - where is here? It’s a forest, sure, but where is it?”

“There’s a town protected by walls that way,” Robin answered, casually pointing her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the nearby town. “There are lots of humans there, go ask around and they’ll give you a map or something. I won’t come with you. Just leave when you can, don’t stay here for long.”

“Alright, I won't linger. As soon as I can leave, I will! I’ll also probably need some cleaner clothes though. These are very… bloody.”

“Just wash them in the river. It was all red last night, but the water has cleared out by now,” Robin suggested with a small shrug. “The flow isn’t very strong, so it’s ideal for washing and fishing.”

“Thank you again,” the human said, sitting up a bit more and turning in Robin’s direction. He stretched out a hand. “I’m Jason,” he introduced himself. Robin didn’t take his hand, instead staring at it. “You may call me Robin. I’d say it’s a pleasure but if I’m being honest, it’s not.”

“That’s- Fair, I guess,” Jason sighed. “I’ll get off your back then.” He took a deep breath and got up from the forest floor. He stretched a little, being extra careful with his stomach wound. It looked pretty bad, and would definitely leave a scar. But Robin didn’t care. She walked off, back to her tree, in search of Fluff.

  
  



	2. The team

With nothing else better to do, Robin trailed after the human whenever possible. That meant she also saw him attempting to wash his clothes. It didn’t go well, since the bloodstains didn’t want to come out at all. Robin didn’t know a way to help either, so she just watched as the man scrubbed his shirt in the water, trying to get it clean. At some point he also got hungry, so Robin left out a small pile of berries for him on a rock near the river. It took him an embarrassingly long time to notice and by the time he did, Robin was mentally screaming at him.

A few hours later, Jason was in cleaner clothes - still stained brown, though - and with a big hole in his shirt where his wound was. Robin felt kind of bad for the man but didn’t bother to assist. It wasn’t her place to poke her nose. So she let the man be and didn’t miss him when he decided to leave and walk in the direction Robin had pointed when he had first woken up. Robin continued her usual day of walking around patrolling the woods. She didn’t find any other humans and by the time it had gotten dark, she was already sleeping in her tree with Fluff by her side yet again.

Robin woke up when the first rays of the Sun reached into the tree. She nudged Fluff a little, also waking the little fox. The two of them climbed out of the tree and Fluff went to find some breakfast. Robin, being a spirit, didn’t need to eat as much and stayed by the riverside in her favourite spot, listening to birds sing. Fluff returned with a rabbit a while later. Robin gratefully accepted a piece of raw meat that the fox offered up and bit into it as he did. She did feel bad, because it had been another animal just ten minutes ago, but nature was harsh and the balance needed sacrifices. Even if they were just innocent rabbits. After having breakfast once in forever, Robin cleaned up by the river and went to patrol around again. She found nothing interesting.

When she got back to the river, she was surprised to see Jason there, in new and clean clothes, looking around, searching for something. Robin walked up to him with a confused look. Jason, too busy to notice Robin standing behind him, kept looking around, analysing the bushes on the other side of the river. Robin coughed to signal her presence, to which Jason flinched violently, almost falling over. “Oh! It’s just you! I was looking for you- Uh… Robert?” It seemed Jason had forgotten her name. Robin stared at the human with disappointment. “It’s Robin,” she corrected a few seconds later. “Why are you here again? I thought you left?”

“I did. And then I came back. I managed to find the river and walked upstream a little while to find the familiar rocks, see-”

“But why did you come back? Humans don’t come to the forest on their own accord unless they need something. What do you need?”

“I came to thank you for helping me. I brought you some sweets.”

“Sweets?” Robin asked, a bit sceptical. She hadn’t heard of that before.

“Yes, sweet foods. Here, try some!” Jason reached into the basket -  _ “He had a basket this entire time? How didn’t I notice it?”  _ \- that had been hidden behind his leg and pulled out a small oval piece of bread wrapped in foil on one side. “This is an apple pie,” he explained happily, presenting the food item to Robin. “I had it specially made smaller since I wasn’t sure if you could eat a big pie all on your own.” Robin took the pie from Jason’s outstretched hand and examined it a little. She pulled the shiny wrapping aside and took a small bite, revealing the soft sweet inside of apple jam. The pie was gone in under a minute, leaving Robin eyeing Jason’s basket. “It was good. Thank you,” she said. Jason smiled. “Glad you liked it because I brought more foods for you to try!” Robin’s eyes lit up in hopes of more of that heavenly sweetness. Jason handed over the basket and Robin dug in, searching through it and trying out various sweets like berry pie, sugar bread, caramel, pudding, and many more different foods.

Robin was still eating various foods when the Sun started to set. Jason stood up. “I’ll have to go back to town now. I’m going on a quest with my friends tomorrow. Do you want to come with? It would be a nice trip and I could buy you even more sweets,” he suggested. Robin saw right through the bribe, but the sweets had truly been delicious. She had never eaten anything so good before, so going into town really was worth it if she got to eat more of these human foods. It took a few hesitant seconds, but Robin made her decision. “I’ll come with you,” she said, looking at the ground. “But not for long. I’ll come back into the forest.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less of you, Robert. Now, come on! We should at least try to make it to town before the Sun sets.” “It’s Robin,” the spirit protested weakly. The two of them walked off, Robin holding the basket while she trailed behind Jason, occasionally pointing him in the right direction when he wandered off too far the wrong way.

The duo made it to the city gate without much fuss, Robin only hesitating for a second before walking out of the treeline and after Jason, to the gate. Jason walked through without batting an eye, and Robin wished she could too. Unfortunately, her antlers and bright green hair attracted quite a bit of attention from the two gatekeepers. They again let her pass without stopping her but were still looking after her as she walked on the streets of the city. Robin could feel their gazes on her back.

Jason made his way to the Adventurer's Guild. Robin could recognise the building anytime. She followed after Jason, sticking as close to him as possible. Jason headed straight for the counter, where the girls in green robes stood. “I’d like to submit a completed quest,” he said as he slid a small piece of paper across the counter, as well as a handful of leaves. Robin had a peek, but couldn’t read what the note said. She had never had the need to learn to read, after all. But the plants, she recognised. They were ones adventurers often took from the woods. Robin didn’t know why humans took these plants but didn’t say anything to ask either. The woman by the counter read over the document and pulled out a small bag from under the counter. “Here’s the reward,” she said, taking the leaves and placing them in a small box of similar leaves behind her. Jason thanked her and stepped away from the counter. “Come on Robin! Let’s go and check out the quests board while we wait for my friends!” he said enthusiastically, walking over to a wall with similar papers. Robin just stood by Jason’s side. “What are these?” she asked him.

“Quests. You can get money for doing them, the amount depends on the difficulty of the task you’re doing. I just cashed in gathering leaves, which isn’t much, but I wasn’t going to go on a more dangerous quest alone with an injury like the one I have,” Jason explained. Robin nodded, pulling another pie out of the basket she was still holding and enjoying the pastry while Jason scanned the board for possible missions. Robin didn’t notice the short blond girl in a dark brown cape approaching Jason until he let out a little yelp when the girl attacked Jason from behind. They got a few looks from other people in the guildhouse for the noise. Robin immediately forgot her pie, rushing to Jason’s aid. She couldn’t have any more sweets if something were to happen to Jason, after all.

Robin grabbed a hold of the girl’s arm that was resting on Jason’s shoulder and pulled it back violently, resulting in the girl tumbling to the ground with a loud thump and Jason losing his balance a little. He started protesting pretty fast: “Robert! Stop it! She’s a friend! Robert!” Robin, a little confused but recognising the meaning of the word ‘friend,’ let the strange girl go and stepped back a little, scanning her head to toe. The girl looked to be in her early twenties, but Robin couldn’t pinpoint her exact age. She was wearing simple pants and a white shirt underneath a cape, with a tool belt around her waist. Robin also saw a bow on her back. She wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before. All in all, she looked like an adventurer ready for a quest.   
  


“It’s  _ Robin _ , not Robert,” Robin grumbled yet again, sending a warning glare at Jason. The girl gave a little laugh: “Haha, sorry! Totally my bad! Sorry for hugging you from behind, Jason!”

“It’s alright. Where are the boys? And Evelyn?”

“The boys are coming, but Evelyn called it quits for today. Said it was family business. I just ran ahead. They should be here any moment now.” The girl whose name Robin still didn’t know stood up from the floor and turned to her. “Who’re you?” she asked her, eyeing her antlers and hair. Jason stepped in: “This is the forest spirit! He saved my life yesterday.”

Robin stared at Jason.  _ “He? Does he think I’m a boy? Are you blind? I’m wearing a skirt, you moron!”  _ she thought angrily, giving Jason a glare. Jason looked confused. “What?” The girl who had joined them gave Jason a look too. “You don’t get it?” Jason was even more confused. “What? No? Is there a joke here I don’t understand?” The girl just rolled her eyes and pointed her thumb at Jason while looking at Robin. “Boys,” she stated. Robin burst out in giggles while Jason looked between the two girls. The adventurer girl gave a little salute. “My name is Mona! And you are Robin, correct?”

“Correct, unlike a certain moron who keeps addressing me as Robert,” Robin said, sending another glare at Jason. Said moron just shrugged. “It’s not like you told me your gender and Robin isn’t a particularly female name-” he started to argue.

“I am wearing a SKIRT,” Robin replied with a pull on the edge of the skirt she was wearing and a point at it.

“...You got me there,” Jason admitted, scratching his head. 

It was at that point that two guys stepped into the guildhouse. Two familiar guys. One was wearing an axe on his belt, the other a sword. The axe-wielder also had dark reddish hair, while the swordsman was blond just like Mona. Robin couldn’t quite put her finger on it but she knew she had met both Mona and the two men somewhere before. But it wasn’t that important at the moment, so she let it be. Jason already walked over to greet the men. “Nyx! Firo! Good to see you guys!”

“Good to see you too! How’re you doing? Life treating you well?” the guy with the axe replied. Jason laughed. “If you only knew! If it wasn’t for Robin I wouldn’t be here right now!” Jason said, pulling Robin closer to him as if to present her to the men, all the while stressing Robin’s name to make sure she noticed he said it right this time. The two men looked a bit confused, but shrugged it off. “So, what quest will we be doing?” the swordsman asked. “We were in battle just a few days ago, so maybe something more peaceful? Considering Evelyn isn’t here and she’s the one healing our injuries most of the time. You know, we had a really nasty tree monster just the day before yesterday-”

“I remember where I know you from!” Robin interrupted, now remembering the battle with the tree spirit just a few days ago in the forest. “You’re Nyx! The leader of the group of adventurers who killed a tree spirit in the woods a couple of days ago!” She herself wasn’t sure if it was an accusation or just a plain sentence, but she didn’t linger on it for long. “You humans never even try to be peaceful, huh? Tree spirits never attack first.”

“Uh…” Nyx seemed to be confused. “Do we know you?” This time it was Mona who jumped in. “Oh! Oh! Were you the one who shot rocks? You said you’re a forest spirit right, so it makes sense that you’d be in the forest! Why’d you help us?”

“Humans are troublesome. Since the tree spirit was already angry, I couldn’t calm it down. I helped you defeat it so you would leave.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

The group was silent. “So…” Mona broke the silence whispering to Jason, Nyx and Firo. “Who’s gonna tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

“Nothing special-” Jason said hesitantly. “It’s just that… Have you been seeing a larger amount of humans in the woods?”

“I have, how did you know?” Robin asked, squinting a little. 

“Well, lately, the Adventurer's Guild has been putting out more assignments to kill creatures in the woods or bring ingredients for potions. The quests are just forest-centred. That’s why everybody is going there.”

“That… Makes sense. I just hope it stops soon. Not many humans wander so deep into the forest to reach the river then? I’ve only seen a couple, but from the number of people in the guildhouse, there should be way more,” Robin deducted, having a quick look around. Their group of 5 stood in the lobby, as well as another group of 3 by the table, two groups were looking at quest applications, one a team of 6 and another of 4. A quick count told Robin that there were 18 people here alone. “There’s quite a bit of people around. And it’s already late, too.”

“Yeah. I guess most stay by the edge of the forest,” Mona agreed. Firo interrupted with a small cough. “What quest shall we be doing? It is already late, so shall we do it today or pass it on to tomorrow?” he queried. Jason thought for a moment. “The board had a couple of forest quests, ingredient gathering and such, as well as a few combat situations near the swamp. Now that it’s getting dark and I’m injured as well as missing Evelyn, I’d say let’s gather ingredients in the woods.” He sent a glance at Robin. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“No. I understand that some humans live off the earnings they make by gathering herbs and meat.”

“Oh!” Mona chirped. “And we have an advantage! Robin here must know the forest very well! She can help us find what we need! Right?” she turned to Robin, who just nodded. Mona cheered. The team came together to form a quick arrangement of which quest to choose while Robin continued eating her pie. Mona eyed it jealously as she and Jason went over to the board to find something suitable.

Firo was the first one of the newly arrived boys who asked Robin about who she was. Robin summed it up with a simple sentence: “I saved Jason’s life in the woods.” Firo nodded in response. “I was going to ask about the horns but since you’re a forest spirit it makes sense.”

“They’re antlers, not horns,” Robin corrected quickly before walking over to Jason and Mona. “What are the choices?” she asked them. Mona was first to reply: “There’s commissions for lizard’s eyes, black cohosh, whatever that is, hawthorn, elderberry, catnip, linden and dandelions.” Nyx and Firo joined the group as well, listening in on the conversation.

“I don’t know any of the plants by name, other than the dandelion, but if you describe them to me I might be able to find them,” Robin said with a small shrug. Firo now spoke up: “What if we got a book with drawings in it? You could determine where the plants are if you recognize them.”

“That could work,” Robin agreed with a thoughtful nod. Firo smiled. “Good. I’ll just go and get a book on herbs then because the library is going to close in 10 minutes. Wait for me,” he said before rushing out the door. Jason chuckled. “He sure likes books a lot.”

“What’s a library?” Robin asked, turning to Mona and Jason again. Mona was again the first to explain: “It’s a big house where you can keep lots of books in one place! Then other people can borrow them for some time to read them and give them back to the library so others can also read them. It’s gotten very popular lately.”

“Good to know.” A few seconds of silence passed, Robin pulling yet another pie from her basket. Mona again eyed the treat jealously. She finally caved after Robin had taken a few bites of the apple pie. “Can I have some?” she asked. Robin looked Mona in the eyes. “Will you cherish it?”

“Of course! These pies are from Edith’s bakery! The best one in town! I just don’t go there that often… And they’re heavenly!” Robin took a moment to think about the offer and then moved to the basket again, pulling out another pie and handing it to Mona. Robin quickly turned away, keeping an eye on the entrance instead. Mona let out a happy chirp and took a big bite out of the small pie. “Wai dwidn’t efn know you cwould make pies so scmall!” she said happily between bites. “We really can’t understand you, Mona,” Jason said with a slight chuckle.

Firo returned just a few minutes later with a book in hand, panting a bit and out of breath as he stepped into the guildhouse. By this time, Jason, Mona, Robin and Nyx had moved over to the tables. Firo headed over, waving the book with a green cover. “I got a book on forest plants!” he said, placing the book down on the table in front of Robin, who immediately passed it on to Mona due to her lack of reading skill. Mona opened up the book and started flipping through it, pausing every now and then to check the pictures on the pages. It took a minute or two but she finally found the plants they were looking for. “Here we go!” She gave the book back to Robin to look at the drawings of plants. “This is elderberry,” Mona said, lingering on the page to see if Robin gave any sign of recognition. Robin nodded - she had seen this plant in the forest before, near the thicker bushes. Mona moved on to the next page she was keeping a finger on. “This is hawthorn and the page next to it is catnip.” Robin again nodded. She also knew these plants. “Black cohosh. And linden,” Mona flipped another few pages. “So, know where any of them are?”

“There’s a field with some linden trees not far from the forest border. We could check there, it’s the closest of all of these.”

“linden it is! Oh, I love the tea you can make from it!” Mona gushed, already walking to the exit. Nyx was the one to grab the linden gathering quest from the questboard and register it, joining the rest of the group a minute later since they had left the building right after Mona. “Heh, sorry!” she apologized. “Totally forgot about the questboard.”

The group walked off in the direction of the forest together, all worries forgotten as they let Robin lead them to where the linden supposedly was. It wasn’t the same clearing that Mona and the team had fought on, but it wasn’t far from it. There were a couple camomille trees by the edge of it, so Robin walked right over and, with a little bit of magic, started gathering the blossoms into a bag. The entirety of the rest of the team - Jason, Mona, Nyx and Firo - just stood there, not really knowing what else to do. It’s not like they could help Robin cast spells - none of them were mages.

Robin was done in a few minutes and handed over the bagful of linden blossoms to Jason. “Anything else? Is that enough?” she asked. Mona burst out laughing. “That was so cool! You got way more than we needed! Haha! Thanks, buddy!” 

“My name is Robin.”

“Sure, whatever. This went way faster than we expected! Jason, why were you hiding this amazing talent of Robin’s from us?” Mona asked with a smile. Jason was quick to excuse himself: “I met her the day before yesterday.” The group of adventurers left the forest happily, not noticing Robin’s disappearance a few minutes later. Robin was tired and wanted to sleep, so she went back to her tree and had a long nap without anyone disturbing her.

☯

The next morning wasn’t eventful, so Robin woke up pretty late, considering she usually got up near sunrise. Today, the sun was long in the sky when she climbed out of her hollow tree. Fluff hadn’t joined her today, but Robin wasn’t sad. He probably had other business to attend to. Instead, Robin resumed her daily patrol duty. Well, it wasn’t duty, she decided to do it herself, but she considered it pretty important to make sure no big catastrophes had happened in her absence. Robin took the usual route - she went upstream from the river, turned right by a very old oak tree and then straight for a little while, until she reached a big pine tree. From there she turned slightly to the right, kept going for another few minutes until reaching a small cliff. Over the cliff and down, straight some more, all the way to a clearing and then right again from next to a big bush by the edge of the clearing. Forward some more and she was back at the river. She only crossed the river a few times a week, since no humans went there. Only wildlife. The whole patrol took about an hour, since Robin had no rush and she walked pretty slow.

Robin was pretty surprised to be met with Jason’s friend group of adventurers when she got back to the riverside. They were all looking around, though Mona was sitting on the ground with her toes in the water, humming happily as her gaze swept over the trees nearby. Robin walked right up to the group. “What’s this?” she asked, confused. 

“Well, you ran off yesterday so we thought we’d come meet you again. Unless you want us to leave?” Jason asked her.

“No, it’s fine,” Robin replied, not really knowing what else to say.

“Actually, I was thinking-” Mona interrupted, “-if you wanted to come eat some more pie with us in town?” Robin did want to eat pie. But she did not want to go into the city walls again. There were too many humans and she got many off looks. Nyx was the one to wipe away her worries: “If you’re with us, nobody will bother you. We’ll make sure of it.”

“...Thanks.”

“So you’ll come?” Jason asked, hopeful. Robin shrugged, hiding her hands behind her back. “Sure.” Jason smiled. “Thank you.” He sounded much more sincere than Robin would have thought. So the group headed back into town with Robin walking in the middle of the group, right Behind Jason, with Mona walking behind her. 

Occasionally Mona pointed out a few interesting things she saw on the way, like a big rock or an animal footprint she also noticed a few berry bushes closer to town and grabbed some to eat. Robin didn’t know them as poisonous so she didn’t decline when she was offered one. On all accounts, this was actually pretty fun. Sometimes Firo would direct the group’s attention to a familiar plant they’d seen in the book last time.

Robin almost didn’t notice when they reached the city gate. Almost. She was focusing on the clouds when they arrived and the only reason she noticed was because she saw the wall in the corner of her eye. She almost flinched back from it, but remembered the company she was in and just stared at the ground instead, not daring to look the gatekeepers in the eye. The group had gotten pretty quiet too, Robin wasn’t entirely sure why.

They got past the gates quick enough. Robin owed thanks to Jason and his friends since she’d never been into town this many times in a row. It was really giving her a confidence boost, but it disappeared as soon as she saw anyone looking her way, which was pretty much immediately. She was still scared of humans, it seemed. Jason, Mona, Nyx and Firo were exceptions to this rule. The group headed right of the entrance instead of the usual straight forward, so Robin didn’t know where they were headed, but she trusted Jason and walked with the group loyally.

“Ta-da!” Mona cheered a minute later. “We’re here! Edith’s bakery! The best in town!” She dragged Robin inside immediately, not even giving her time to ask about Edith. Robin forgot all about it by the time they got inside, because the smell of freshly baked bread and pies hit her straight on. Robin immediately headed over to the counter, looking at the various sweets and drooling lightly of the thought of eating any of them. Mona chuckled. “I guess we’ve found your weak spot!” she joked. Jason smiled. “Where’s Edith? In the back room?” he asked nobody in particular, just wondering out loud.

“She is probably in the kitchen, making fresh dough for the pastries. It’s about that time of day. We can wait here for her return,” Firo said, gesturing at the small table by the window. The group headed over and Nyx started a conversation about their favourite sweets. “My favourites are definitely the caramel cookies!”

“No way!” Jason argued. “The chocolate cake beats it by a mile!”

“I think that the fresh sugarbread is the best of them all!” Mona expressed, not really as involved in the argument as Jason was. She just threw the idea out there.

“I enjoy the raspberry cake,” Firo added after a moment of thought.

“What about you, Robin?” Mona asked the spirit, pulling her into the conversation.

“Apple pie,” Robin responded without hesitation. Of all the sweets she had tried from the basked Jason had gotten for her, the apple pie struck her as the best. “It’s sweet, but not too much and at the same time it gives off a taste of the forest.”

“It makes sense that the forest spirit prefers the one with fruit! Did you try the ones with berries though?” Mona continued. “There are berries in the forest after all.”

“Blueberry?”

Mona picked up the menu from the table.  _ “Who got that? Firo? It must have been Firo, he got the menu when I wasn’t looking,”  _ Robin decided. “I don’t think there’s anything with blueberry, sorry,” Mona said after a second of reading.

“Then apple pie,” Robin stood by her initial choice. At that point, Jason decided to go see where Madam Edith was. Mona continued chatting with Nyx as Robin stared at the menu, trying to make sense of the letters, and Firo looked out the window.

Jason returned with an older lady in tow. The first thing Robin noticed about her was that her hair was in a little bun and covered with a layer of fabric. “What can I get you dears?” the woman asked with a smile. Robin was reminded of the lady selling apples at the town square a few days ago, who also used the word “dear” to address people. Firo rattled off the list of foods they had all picked as their favourites and the lady gave a small nod as she wrote them down on a small piece of paper. “That makes two gold coins and three silver ones,” she said as she fumbled around by the counter, getting the requested foods ready on plates. Everybody but Robin pulled out their coin pouches and each gathered a coin, Mona also volunteering to pay for Robin. Jason started to argue that he should pay for Robin, but Mona ignored him and paid for Robin’s pie for her before Jason could do anything.

The old lady Edith put two of the plates on the table in front of Robin and she almost took a bite out of the nearest one right then and there - it just smelled so good! Mona hopped over to the counter to get the remaining 3 plates for Edith, who thanked her and wobbled over to the kitchen again. Robin noticed Firo pulling the plate she almost grabbed for herself his way - that must have been the raspberry cake then, since Firo said he liked that he liked it.

Robin dug into her pie as soon as Mona retracted her hand from the plate. This pie was much bigger than the ones she’d gotten before, so she had a tougher time holding it without it falling apart, but she managed. Only halfway through the pie did Robin see everyone else at the table staring at her. They all were holding forks and Jason slid one over to Robin without a word. Robin shrugged and put the pie down on the plate, now using the fork to cut pieces instead of biting into the pie directly. "Thanks for the pie," she said when done. She was the first one, seeing as everyone else was still eating their own pastry. That left her time and she decided to spend it looking out the window.

The house on the other side of the street wasn’t that interesting, but Robin noticed a cat on the windowsill inside the house, which was cute. Robin liked animals. This one was nice white but with orange and brown spots. It had beautiful blue eyes and a cute nose. Robin almost didn’t notice the group standing up to leave, but Jason pulled her up by her arm so she really couldn’t ignore that. Apparently, while she was staring at the cute calico cat, everybody else had finished eating and now they were heading to the Adventurer's Guild. Robin followed suit.

The guildhouse became more familiar every time she went there. She already knew the girls by the counter, the location of the questboard and how many tables there were in the small hall: There were 8 tables, she had counted last time. Jason headed straight to the questboard and began to analyse it, Firo and Nyx following his example. Mona was the only one who instead focused on Robin, giving her an assuring smile and a small pat on the head.

Humans were so tall, why had Robin not noticed it before? Mona could pat her on the head without even raising her hand that high. Robin only reached her chest! She quietly pondered over the height of humans compared to her, ignoring everything else.  _ “Do my antlers count for height? That would be cheating, wouldn’t it? They’re pretty big, after all. I reach Mona’s head with them, even though my eyes are on her shoulder level. Jason- Jason is even taller!”  _ Robin discovered with a look over to him. Jason was indeed even taller than Mona, Robin could only reach his lower chest area. While Robin grumbled silently, she could also notice the group’s expressions turn tense.

“What is it?” she asked, confused about the strange lack of joy on the team’s faces. They had just eaten pie and cake! Why would they be so tense? Was it something on the board?

“Can’t you see it?” Jason asked, pointing at a certain poster on the wall of quests. It was a new piece of parchment compared to some other, older quests and it had a drawing. Robin looked closer. It was a big lizard with wings. A dragon, if she remembered correctly. And it looked angry in the picture.

“There’s a dragon in the picture. So?”

“No- Robin, read it!” Jason said, exasperated.

“Oh, I can’t read,” Robin stated without elaborating. The group stood in silence for a few seconds. “So that’s why you asked me what the options of quests were instead of looking at the board yourself!” Mona said with a small gasp. Robin nodded in confirmation. “So what does the poster say about the dragon?” Robin asked. Firo was the one to translate: “It says that a dragon has been spotted nearby. And everybody knows that all cities with dragons nearby have burnt to the ground in a matter of weeks.”

“So the dragon is a problem? How do we get rid of it?”

“According to the poster, we should just ‘get rid of it,’ it isn’t specified how exactly,” Firo explained shortly. “And since the reward is pretty handsome, we should probably go.”

“Without Evelyn?” Nyx protested. “She’s our healer, we can’t fight a dragon without a healer! Can’t she come?”

“No, she’s busy because her mother’s apothecary needed helping hands. She probably will be by the end of the week,” Mona sighed.

“Can’t Robin heal?” Firo suggested. All eyes turned to Robin. She panicked. “No- Uh- I mean yes, I can heal, but not big injuries! Only small cuts and-”

“You fixed me up, didn’t you?” Jason interrupted. “And I had been stabbed. I’m pretty sure you can handle it Robin.” Nyx, Mona and Firo nodded in agreement. Robin gave a sigh. “Fine. But not a long journey!” she agreed reluctantly.

“I wouldn’t dare part you from the forest for long. You do belong there after all,” Jason said with a soft smile. Mona cheered and Nyx gave Robin a pat on the shoulder. “Welcome to the team.”


	3. Edhyr

Robin was quite grateful for the three more pies she had been granted the very same day, but it was kind of sad to sit alone in Edith’s shop. Everybody else had rushed home to pack their bags for the mission, since they would spend a couple nights away from home. They would need clean clothes and food supplies. Robin didn’t need those things, and neither did she know where anybody lived, so she was deposited in the bakery and told to stay there since it was the gathering spot for the team. They had bought Robin a couple pies to fill her time - and as an apology for leaving her alone -, but Robin was still lonely. So she decided to call over Madame Edith, the old lady keeping the bakery all by herself. They were the only two people in the shop, anyway, and neither of them had anything better to do. Alright, Robin supposed Edith could work on some other pastries in the kitchen, but she was so nice to come hang out with the spirit so she decided she would enjoy the time while she could.

Edith had all sorts of stories to tell and Robin listened with interest to the old baker’s stories of adventure. Nobody else knew she had been an adventurer before, and nobody had asked either so Robin was honoured to be the first one to hear about this.

“Why are you sitting here all alone anyway?” Edith asked about 20 minutes into their chat. Robin gave a short rundown: “A dragon was spotted near the city so my... friends... are preparing for a mission to get rid of it. We’re meeting here.”

“A dragon you say? I fought a dragon once. It was horrible, many people died. It was a long and hard battle, but we defeated the dragon. Only for it to be a fruitless effort, since the dragon was never dangerous to begin with.”

“What do you mean?” Robin queried.

“The dragon never meant any harm. It was only when us adventurers got involved that it got hostile. It expected an attack from any human that came close. Had we realised it sooner, we could have prevented many deaths. Promise me one thing,” Edith said, completely serious, looking Robin in the eye. “Talk to the dragon before anybody attacks it. Don’t fight it. Just ask it to relocate. I’m sure they will agree to your terms.”

“Alright…” Robin was unsure what else to say, but she had never spoken to a dragon before so this was a new area. “It can’t be that bad, it’s just a big lizard. I can communicate with lizards to some extent.” 

Edith left to work back at the kitchen after that conversation. Robin was left alone with her one remaining pie, so she took small bites of it as she waited for the group of adventurers to arrive.

Firo arrived first. He walked right over to Robin and sat down on the other side of the table, setting down a blue backpack on the floor. Robin ripped off a small piece of the pie and handed it over to Firo. He was surprised to receive the piece, but grateful nonetheless and ate it with a quiet hum. Mona arrived not much later, also joining the table, with a red carrier bag draped over her shoulder. Robin didn’t give her a slice of pie though, and Firo didn’t mention it either, having already eaten his piece. They both came to a silent agreement not to give anyone else pie today. Robin quickly ate the rest of the pie, which wasn’t much anymore, and she finished just as Nyx walked in the door with a big brown backpack on his shoulder. Mona and Nyx chatted up a conversation, Firo and Robin just silently staring at each other, sharing thoughts on an emotional level instead. Robin didn’t know how it worked, but it was comforting to know that there was someone else who didn’t spend every free second chatting with someone.

The four of them waited a while for Jason to show up. He did, though extremely late. Mona had almost ran out of conversational topics by that point. “Sorry, guys! So sorry! I totally lost track of time!” Jason was also wearing a backpack, his was dark green. “Shall we get going then?” Nyx gave a word of confirmation and the team headed out, to the west of the town, away from the forest or city walls.

Robin hadn’t even been this far out. They walked on a cobblestone road for a while, but it eventually stopped and was instead a dirt path. It looked like it would get muddy as soon as it was wet - which was true, Robin knew. Mona was singing some travelling song, Robin wondered how she knew it. It seemed to go on infinitely.

“Forty eight little pots on the shelf there was, forty eight little pots on the shelf~ The cat came over and knocked one over~ Now there’s forty seven pots on the shelf~! Forty seven little pots on the shelf there was, forty seven little pots on the shelf~ Granny came in and grabbed one with~ Now there’s forty six pots on the shelf~!” Mona sang. 

“Hey, Mona?” Mona stopped singing the next verse, glancing at Robin, who was walking a little after Mona. “Yeah, Robin?”

“What happens when there are no pots on the shelf?” she asked.

“I won’t tell you!” Mona laughed. “You’ll just have to listen on!” And she continued singing. Robin looked over to what everyone else was doing to find an activity instead. Firo was engrossed in a book. “How does he read without tripping while he walks?” Robin wondered. Nyx was glaring at Mona more and more as she continued singing. It seemed he didn’t like her song. Jason was the one holding the map and he checked it every couple seconds to make sure they were going in the right direction. Robin was glad at least one of them was focusing on the mission. Robin again focused on Mona’s song, waiting for her to reach one pot on the shelf, counting how many times the cat knocked one over. Approximately every fifth was a cat’s work.

This journey was going to feel like eternity.

☯

They had been walking for a solid four hours when Nyx finally decided to take a rest thanks to everyone’s complaints. The whole team was dead on their feet, the water supply almost out and everybody’s feet burning. Except Nyx. Nyx was fine. Robin desperately wanted to know his secret - “How is he not feeling like he’ll fall over any second now?” - but now was not the time. The group of adventurers collapsed on a big rock near the river. The same river that flowed through Robin’s home forest, but here it was much more grand, stronger and bigger. You couldn’t cross it without a bridge, unlike the more stream-like flow of the river in the forest near Robin’s tree where you could easily walk through the water without much resistance. It was stronger upstream and divided into parts halfway down because of a higher hill in the middle of the forest, but Robin’s den was pretty far from the splitting point and had slow flow.

The water supply was refilled - Nyx volunteered, seeing as everyone else nearly passed out as soon as they sat down, Robin included. “Oww~ My feet hurt soooo bad!” Mona complained loudly to nobody in particular. A mess of jumbled humms of agreements echoed through the group, Robin joining in with a frustrated grunt. Jason had a closer look at the map meanwhile he sat on the rock. Mona had thrown herself to the ground and was now laying there, almost looking like a corpse if not for the even movement of her body that came naturally with breathing. Firo had leaned on the rock and lost his balance, leaving him tripping all over said rock. Along the way he had managed to drop his book, as it was now laying down on the ground on the other side of the rock. Firo looked kind of desperate as he reached out for it, but he couldn’t reach.Nobody else moved to help either and it seemed Firo prioritised his burning feet over a book.

“Alright then, drink up! We can’t have you being dehydrated!” Nyx said, handing a flask of water to Jason and one to Firo. Mona grumbled a little, but didn’t make a move to rise from the ground. Firo handed the flask over to Robin when he was done, having nearly drunk the full flask. Nyx was quick to refill it and give it back to Robin. “So, Robin,” he said. A conversation starter.

“Hmm?” Robin replied with a humm, still chugging water flom the flask.

“Do you have any special talents we could use in combat other than the minor healing? Anything offensive? We gotta take you into the team and include you in battle plans, after all.”

“Mh,” Robin grunted, still drinking water. The flask emptied quickly and Robin was forced to give it back to Nyx. “I can use most elemental attacks. I don’t know how strong they are compared to humans, but elemental magic in general is what I can do,” she replied.

“Would you be alright if we tested it out sometime?”

“I don’t mind if you find a good place with some space.”

“Great! I’ll be sure to keep an eye out.” Nyx stood silent again and so it stayed for a good few minutes. Robin lied down on the rock with Firo, who moved over slightly to make room. Sitting there in the sunlight without moving a muscle was relaxing. Robin wondered why she hadn’t done it more often. 

Robin jolted awake when a sound scared her all of a sudden. A loud thump. Quickly looking over the small group, she figured Mona must have also fallen asleep, as she had now rolled around on the grass, looking at the source of the sound with the dirtiest - literally - sleepy face Robin had ever seen. “Sleeping face first in grass can’t be that comfortable.” Jason was sitting on the ground a little bit left of Mona. Nyx had jumped up from the ground where he had been sitting. And Firo-

“Are you alright?” Firo was on the ground, having fallen off the rock. That’s what had produced the thump. The fall wasn’t high, but it couldn’t have been painless either. Firo grunted, signalling slight pain. “That’ll leave a bruise,” he said, voice hoarse. Robin threw a weak healing spell at him and closed her eyes again, settling down on the rock once again. Firo gave a small moan and a thanks, not bothering to move from where he had fallen.

The group rested for an hour or so before agreeing to move on and also keep an eye out for potential training grounds to test Robin’s combat abilities. They didn’t have to go far, since Jason just offered a clearing that he noticed on the map. They headed over and had a look. It seemed to be a proper grassland with a few rocks dropped about and a couple bigger ones here and there. Nyx deemed it perfect for practice.

“You said you could use elemental magic? Show us fire, water, earth and wind then?” Jax offered to Robin. Firo was ready to take notes, Mona was excitedly bouncing on her spot and Jason was just grinning like a fool. Robin gave a small nod and approached one of the bigger rocks, which was about her size. She sent off a small flame in it’s direction by waving her hand and looked back at Nyx for feedback. “Too weak,” Nyx said. “Go all out if you can.”

“But I don’t want to burn the forest down,” Robin replied, leaving the adventurers baffled. Before they could comment, she sent another flame attack at the rock, this time a bit stronger. The rock went up in flames for a few seconds and when Robin ceased the attack, it was smoking lightly. The top layer of the stone was charred black. Firo scribbled away in his notebook. Robin moved on to the water attack, sending a strong stream of water at the rock instead, keeping the flow steady by placing her hands in front of her, palms directed at the rock. The water moved at great speeds and managed to lift the rock a little, moving it a foot’s worth. Robin, happy with the results, moved on to earth magic.

Since the target was a rock, she just blasted it to shards with a calculated kick and sent the shards flying at the ground with a change in the airflow’s direction so as to not harm anyone in the vicinity. The stone pieces were smaller and bigger, the smallest being the size of a fingernail and the biggest the size of Robin’s arm. Robin turned to Nyx. “That good?”

“That… Was AMAZING!” Mona yelled. “You obliterated that rock! You’re the strongest magician I’ve ever seen!”

Robin started to argue: “Surely there’s someone stronger-” 

“If anyone, it would be the royal mages,” Firo interrupted. “They are extremely high level, the best in the country. But since elemental magic is very hard to grasp, and you know several of them very well, I’d say you were in the top 10 of the country’s most skilled magicians.” Firo ended his analysis with a small bow. Jason and Nyx quickly joined in the celebrations. Robin was the only one left confused. “Magic is hard… to grasp?” But nobody seemed to hear her quiet mutter and Robin was left to ponder on her own as the group moved on toward their goal.

☯

Robin sat on her bed quietly, not sure what to do. The sun had risen. She had woken up in a bed. An actual bed. She had never slept in an actual bed before. Nyx had gotten them into some sort of guesthouse, so now here they were, the two of them. Robin and Mona slept in one room. Well, Mona was still sleeping, that was Robin’s main problem. What was she supposed to do now? So far away from home, she didn’t have a purpose other than to stick with the group. And Mona was asleep. The boys were all in another room and Robin didn’t know which one, since the house they were in had many. Her best option was to wake for Mona to wake up.

Or wake her up. But that would be rude.

Robin didn’t know what she should do. So she just sat there, keeping an eye on the window, listening to the birds in the nearby trees singing. She eventually got bored and decided to still wake up Mona. Robin silently got off her bed and snuck over to Mona's. She gave Mona a small poke in the arm. She only turned a little. Robin sighed a little and poked again. It didn't work either. Robin gave Mona's arm a small slap. Mona just pulled the blanket over her head.

"Mona," Robin hissed. "Mona!" Another slap. Mona still ignored her. Robin gave up on using her hand and instead went to get a pillow from her bed. It would hurt less this way. And with her mighty power, Robin threw the pillow and where she figured Mona's face would be under the blanket. Bullseye.

Mona jumped up with a yelp. "Wh-! What time is it?" Robin took a look out the window. "I'd say it's nearing noon."

"Already?!?" Mona jumped out the bed and Robin diverted her look to the floor. Mona was wearing practically nothing. "You should probably change before we go anywhere," she noted and went to place the pillow she was still holding back on her own bed. Robin quickly left the room to give Mona privacy and stood in the hallway to wait for her. Robin had nothing in particular to do there, so she just examined the small cracks and scratches on the wooden wall. It had a small indent that looked a bit like a smiling face. Robin was immediately a bit happier when she saw it. 

Mona joined her minutes later, she took a bit longer than Robin had expected, and the girls headed downstairs. "So.." Robin broke the silence. "Where are the boys?"

"I don't know what room they're in. Maybe they woke earlier, too."

"That's inconvenient."

"I'm hungry too," Mona complained. "I feel like we're eating breakfast without the boys today."

"I don't think this inn offers breakfast," Robin pointed out. Robin couldn’t see a cafeteria or any sort of dining area at all.

"Well, Sora. I guess we'll have to find a vendor and spend some funds. Unless you have some magical ability to make food appear," Mona grumbled. Robin perked up. "I can hunt," she offered. Mona took a second to consider.

"Eh, what do we have to lose?"

And that's how Robin found herself standing unmoving near a bush behind the inn as Mona stood a bit further away. Any small movement from anywhere and Robin would attack. She knew rabbits usually lived in similar areas, making burrows in the roots of trees or under bushes. This was a prime location for a rabbit's home. 

A branch moved and so did Robin. A quick flip of a hand sent sharp rocks at the bush. A weak thump and a row of squeaks. She had done it. It didn't feel good by any means, but Robin didn't want Mona to starve or spend her money unnecessarily either. She moved to collect the rabbit and end it's misery as fast as possible.

Mona volunteered to cook the rabbit - she said not to mention the campfire they made in the grass to anyone - so she could eat it. Robin declined the offer of food this time. She didn't need it, anyway.

When Mona had eaten, Robin stared at her for a little while. "So… Boys?"

"Boys," Mona agreed and got up from where she was sitting in the grass. Robin followed her back to the inn. They asked the receptionist about the guys and got a room number to try. Mona marched right up and slammed the door so hard Robin was afraid it might fly off its hinges. Luckily, it didn't.

Robin couldn't see the reactions of whoever was inside since the door didn't fly off its hinges and thus was still closed, but she could hear a yelp, then footsteps. The door opened.

"Mona? Robin? Why are you up so early?" Jason asked them.

"It's noon."

"Oh, is it?" Jason craned his neck to look out the window. "Huh. It is. Alright, we'll get up." He then closed the door. Robin could hear some talking. It seemed Mona deemed the mission a success and they went back downstairs to the entrance to wait for the boys.

Jason, Nyx and Firo came downstairs just a couple minutes later. "Man, I'm hungry! What's for breakfast?" Jason asked. Nyx nodded along enthusiastically. Mona sighed and smirked: "There is no breakfast. You'll just have to go out and buy something to eat from a vendor, if you can find one!" Nyx let out a groan while Jason visibly lost all hope he had previously had on his face. "No breakfast? What kind of inn is this?"

"A cheaper one."

"But you must be starving as well, so you better come with," Nyx argued.

"Aha! We already ate!" Mona clapped her hands together. "I guess you boys will have to eat on your own. Meet us back here in an hour~" she said in a singsong voice. Mona ran out the door, grabbing Robin's forearm and dragging her with. Robin would actually have preferred to chat with Firo a little bit, but Mona gave no mercy as she dragged her back to the little bit of forest behind the inn.

☯

Robin wondered if adventurers took long trips like this one in the forest as well. They'd been walking for days when they finally reached their destination. A big cave, fit for a dragon's nest. The entrance alone was gigantic, Robin bet it was at least five times Jason's height. A cold breeze came from the cave, giving the whole thing an eerie vibe. Nobody really wanted to go in there either, considering the fact that somewhere in there lived a big and probably angry dragon, but nobody knew where exactly.

"One of us has to go in and then signal the group to follow every now and then. We can't all go in at once, we will get killed like that," Firo stated with no regard for the tension in the air. None of the adventurers wanted to go in first. Robin assessed the situation for a few seconds. "I'll go," she said. "Nobody else wants to, and I've never been to a cave this big before. I want to explore it."

"Robin!"

"For real?!"

"You'd really be willing-"

Sounds came from all around, everybody showing off some sort of surprise. Firo was the only one to not say anything, instead scanning Robin from head to toe as if to see if she was being sincere. Robin nodded. "None of you want to go, right? I want to see the cave and from all of us, I probably have the biggest chance to survive on my own. It's only logical."

"Robin, I don't really know how else to do this," Jason said in some sort of apology before hugging the spirit tightly. Mona was quick to join in. Firo also joined, awkwardly patting Robin's head a little. Nyx took a while to get the clue but also joined the group hug a few seconds later.

The hug lasted a whole minute before Mona let go. "We're with you in spirit," she promised. Robin nodded in understanding and, without further ado, walked right into the cave. A little while in, not sensing any danger but still seeing light from the opening of the cave, Robin decided to give her first signal. A high whistle echoed throughout the chilly cave. Robin could hear talking from behind her. "Robin? Was that you?" Mona yelled. It echoed back in the cave. Robin had the sudden urge to slap her own face with her palm. "Yes. It's the signal. Don't talk anymore," she replied. Silence sounded. Robin moved on, deeper in the cave. At one point, she couldn't see light from the opening anymore, so she cast a quick light spell. Her hand started glowing softly, illuminating the cold cave. Robin worried a little. She was fine in the cold, but would her human friends be? "When did I start thinking of them as friends? I've never had any before." Robin continued and gave off another whistle every couple minutes, signalling that it was safe to continue onward. She couldn't see the others anymore, but could hear their footsteps a little. They were probably doing their best to stay quiet.

Robin continued on, pausing every few minutes to let the others catch up to her whistles. The cave got colder and colder as they moved deeper and Robin started to fear they might get lost.

The spirit forgot all about her worries when she made it to a giant chamber. The walls were black like coal - Robin was pretty sure it was charred from some sort of fire - a bit off the centre of the room there were three big pillars reaching to the ceiling, wider on the bottom and top than in the middle. They were made of lighter stone and Robin didn’t know how they could have just gotten there, so she put it aside as a mystery to solve another time. In the dead center of the big cave - “Room?” - lay a small pile of gems, reaching up to Robin’s knees. She stepped closer to investigate, but halted her movement when she felt eyes on her. She took a frantic look around and determined the source to be behind her. Robin spun around to meet big blue eyes, sparkling varily, following her every movement. Robin only registered the scales and big teeth on the same face a few seconds later - it was the dragon, guarding the entrance on the wall right above it.

Overall purple, blue and red in colour, the magnificent creature was about three times Robin’s height. The spirit was a tiny bit scared, but mostly curious and very much interested. She’d never met a dragon before, though she had heard that one lived even further in the forest, far from where Robin patrolled, in another spirit’s territory.

The dragon also looked interested in Robin. She raised a hand. “May I…?” the spirit halted to ask permission to touch the dragon. It shifted a little and nodded its big head. Robin softly touched the dragon’s scales, slipping her hand over the edges and examining them in wonder. “You’re beautiful…” Robin whispered. She meant it, too. The dragon was truly majestic. Robin was even sad that it was hiding in this cave and not showing its beauty off in the world. She looked into its eyes again with a small smile. The dragon seemed to perk up at Robin’s comment, as if it was happy. Robin supposed it was. “What can I call you?” the spirit asked. The dragon had no real way to reply, but somehow Robin knew. She knew its- No, her name. Edhyr, the dragon of gems. Robin was left confused on the how, but pushed the thought aside, instead opting to look Edhyr in the eyes. It was almost as if they developed a connection in the short time, understanding sparking between the two magical beings almost immediately. Robin didn’t want to part from the creature anymore. The dragon understood her like nobody had before. No human or animal had ever even come close to this feeling.

It all went south when the dragon suddenly roared loudly and jumped defensively, claws first, in Robin’s direction. Robin rushed out of the way, barely managing to dodge. Edhyr curled protectively around her pile of gems, leaving the entrance open for view. "Don't worry, Robin!" a familiar voice shouted. "We're here to help!" 

"No!" Robin yelled at the sight of Jason holding a longsword, Firo armed with his axe, Mona with her bow already aimed at the dragon and Jax standing at the front, sword clear in view. "It's not what it looks like!" But they didn't listen, advancing on the terrified dragon still defending her treasure. Robin rushed to Edhyr's aid. "Guys! Stop it!" The spirit stood in front of the dragon, hands open to either side, blocking Edhyr off from the adventurers. Nyx faltered, but Jason jumped to pull Robin away. "Get away! It's dangerous!"

"STOP!" Robin screamed, but it wasn't enough. Edhyr roared, jumping to Robin's defense. That startled Mona and she let go of the arrow on her bow. It narrowly passed Robin's head. Edhyr, startled by the sudden movement, flinched to the side. Unfortunately, that didn't save her. The arrow pierced Edhyr's left eye, which would have been left intact if she hadn't moved. The dragon roared in pain and the cave shook from the volume. Robin started crying and rushed back to Edhyr's side. "I'm sorry! This wasn't supposed to happen!" Edhyr, visibly in pain and upset, swiped her claws to clear the way out, forcing the adventurers to dodge, and dashed for the exit, fleeing from her home. Robin managed to grab a hold of Edhyr's leg and thus went with.

The dragon, reaching the forest outside the cave a couple minutes later, leaped high, spreading her wings, and took off into the skies. Robin climbed up to her back and hugged her as best as she could with the dragon's size, still crying. "They weren't supposed to- Hurt you-" she managed to say between sobs. Edhyr seemed to understand and responded with a reassuring growl. 

Robin didn't know where they were flying. Neither did she care. She was too sad to care. Her friends hadn't listened, hadn't heard her pleas, and they had harmed this magnificent creature forever, blinded in one eye. She glanced over at Edhyr’s eye. The arrow was still there. Removing it would hurt even more than it did to receive it. It made her even more miserable.

Maybe humans just weren't worth it. She should have stayed in the forest. "Wait- The forest!" Robin perked up a little. She could go home! And take Edhyr with her! 

"Edhyr! Let's go back to my forest! I know a place you could stay for a little while," Robin finally spoke her thoughts out loud for the dragon to hear. She seemed to sadden at the reminder that her home was no longer safe and her treasure gone, but gave a nod nonetheless. Robin pointed her the direction in which the forest would be and they continued to fly that way from there on.

Now that Robin was no longer crying, she took a moment to appreciate the beauty around her. Edhyr's wings were giant, fading from a beautiful shade of sea blue by the back of the dragon to a gentle pinkish red at the ends, reminding Robin a bit of sunrise by the sea. The dragon's head had two hornlike ends, pointed away from the snout. Robin had to twist herself a little and risk falling off, but she wanted to also get an image of the tail. Edhyr's tail faded into white at the very end. It had four big flaps that helped the dragon steer in the air. Robin loved the overall look.

"You're truly beautiful," she muttered, smiling sadly. Robin leaned down and closed her eyes, listening to the wind and feeling it ruffle her hair. It was oddly calm for the situation they had just come from.

☯

A couple hours had passed in relative silence with only a couple sentences exchanged between the two when Robin sighted a familiar town surrounded by big walls. A quick check of the locations of the bigger trees and rocks in the forest confirmed that they were here. “Edhyr, this is it! My forest! You can land on that clearing there!” Robin pointed out a clearing she knew was near a bigger cliff where Edhyr could hide out for a while. The dragon twisted in the air and headed downward, forcing Robin to grab around her neck so as to not slip off. Edhyr made it past the trees without trouble and landed with a few mighty wing flaps slowing down her descent. The ground shook a little when she finally touched the ground, but Robin doubted it could be felt all the way into the city.

Edhyr stretched a wing down to the ground, allowing Robin to slide off her back unharmed. “Thanks,” the spirit said with a small smile. Edhyr turned to look at Robin again, revealing her eye with the arrow still in it. It had been bleeding for a while and Robin had no doubt it was painful. She sighed deeply. “We have to do something about your eye,” she said sadly. Edhyr growled a little, it even sounded whiny, as if she didn’t want to.

“I know it hurts. It will hurt. But then it will get better. I’ll have to pull it out eventually and it’s better sooner than later,” she stated, hands trembling a little. Edhyr stayed silent, in thought. Then she lied down and placed her head next to Robin, looking at the spirit with her right eye. Robin didn’t move away and faced the gaze straight on. “It has to be done.” Edhyr seemed to agree, though still against the idea. Then she shifted, lifted her head to the other side of Robin, leaving her now blind eye revealed to Robin. The spirit inhaled sharply through her teeth. It looked a lot worse up close. The arrow seemed to be pretty deep in and that side of the face was all covered in deep red, almost black blood that had dried here and there. Robin took a deep breath. “Here I go…” she muttered more to herself than to Edhyr. 

Robin grabbed a hold of the arrow embedded in Edhyr’s eye socket. With a quick twist and pull, it came loose, but not quite out. Edhyr howled in pain. Robin choked. ”I’m so sorry!” She jiggled the arrow a bit and managed to pull it free. The spirit conjured up some water to clean the wound as she threw away the arrow with her other hand, discarding it into the grass.

Robin quickly washed the wound of blood as well as I could, all while attempting to heal it so it wouldn’t bleed any more. Edhyr was still growling quietly, but the worse pain must have passed since she was no longer howling.

Robin took a few steps back. “How is it?” Edhyr lifted her head and blinked in test with her intact right eye. Her left eye slipped closed and so it stayed. She turned around and gave Robin a grateful look. Robin smiled back. “So it’s better?” The dragon nodded. Robin exhaled in relief. “Good then. Want to have a rest now? You had to fly for quite a long time.” The dragon nodded and Robin directed her towards the cliffside. It was slightly tilted, so it gave a little roof to hide under. It was too small to cover the entirety of Edhyr, since she was a big dragon.

“Have a rest. I’ll have to go find an old friend of mine, is it alright if I leave for a little while? Or do you prefer I stay?” Robin asked, looking Edhyr in the eye. The creature hesitated. That was a sign enough for Robin. “Alright, I’ll stay with you.” Edhyr lied down, leaning on the cliffside, and opened her front legs slightly to make room. Robin happily took the spot between the dragon’s claws, feeling protected by the warmth the creature gave off. It seemed that Edhyr felt the same, as she rested her head right next to Robin, closing her eyes. Only then did Robin register the emotional strain and lack of energy in her and she, too, decided to take a nap. “What a long day it has been.” 

Robin did not expect to wake up at the ground beneath her suddenly shifting. It took her a couple seconds to remember where she had fallen asleep in the first place and took a look around. Edhyr was still there next to her, but she looked on edge, even panicked. “That can’t be good.” “What is it?” Robin asked, rubbing her eye with her right hand. Edhyr’s gaze snapped to the still sleepy spirit. Robin saw the urgence in her eyes. This wasn’t a mere problem, this was something big. And then she heard it. Footsteps.

“Oh, shucks,” Robin cursed. “Go! Go! GO!” She grabbed a hold of Edhyr’s leg, doing her best to hold onto it with her arms and feet as she took off with a mighty jump, rushing to escape from the humans approaching the clearing, and not a second too late. A big group of humans - adventurers, all of them, Robin could see the weapons on their backs and waists - entered the small forest clearing. They started shouting and Robin could feel Edhyr speed up. They both wanted nothing more than to be left alone at this point, tired and wounded, they both wanted peace. The world clearly wasn’t on their side. 

Edhyr didn’t manage to dodge the fire sent at her from the ground, all she could do was hope that her scales resisted. Robin watched with sadness as the beautiful scales on the dragon’s tail were charred black almost immediately. A couple arrows came their way and Robin knew Edhyr could resist them on scales, but avoid them as much as possible. She herself dodged a couple as well, trying not to get shot. She had given up arguing. Nobody listened to her anyway. If Jason, Mona, Nyx and Firo didn’t listen to her pleas, why would strangers?

All in all, Robin wanted to get away, and so did Edhyr. But the humans hunting the dragon weren’t so remorseful. Another cloud of flames followed, this time burning Edhyr’s wings. She stumbled in the air, starting to lose height. Robin panicked, and so did Edhyr. “We’re falling! Edhyr, when we touch down, run as far as you can as fast as you can. We need to get away from them or-” Robin couldn’t finish the thought.

As they got closer to the ground, more attacks started coming at them. Fire, rocks, arrows, some people were already waving swords. Robin was scared, and she knew that Edhyr was too. As soon as the dragon touched the ground, she bolted, ripping down trees in her way, running for her life. Hers and Robin’s. The mass of adventurers followed right after, ready to kill the dragon as soon as possible. Robin directed Edhyr to the river, hoping to get to the other side to slow down the humans. They ran upstream, where the water flow was stronger and the water deeper than Robin’s usual slice of the river, which was one of three splits ahead and thus much smaller. Edhyr jumped over the big river easily enough, but when humans followed, they didn’t stop at the water. It took mere seconds for one of the magic users to catch up and use a spell to block the waterflow - they were catching up, and fast. Edhyr, not seeing another choice, turned around to face them with a mighty roar. She sent a wall of fire at the humans, delaying them longer, as well as swiping her claws at the nearer adventurers. Robin was usually against violence, but these humans had attacked first and weren’t content with the dragon fleeing. This was a fight to the death, and the enemy ranks were only increasing. The 40-something humans were on the offensive and Robin saw no other choice. She joined in, continuously adding to the wall of fire and sharp rocks. She also did her best to protect Edhyr by redirecting the offensive fire away from her with airflow, but she wasn’t sure how good of a job she was actually doing.

Robin and Edhyr were struggling, both running out of energy quickly, last night’s exhaustion coming back to haunt them. Robin was pretty sure a few humans had still persisted to the fire Edhyr was spitting and died in the process, but she didn’t even feel bad at the thought anymore. This was clearly war. Edhyr moved back a few meters every couple seconds, retreating to get away from the adventurers out for some dragon blood. It wasn’t looking good. And it wasn’t getting any better either.

Robin was horrified when she saw the net cannon in the distance. She knew the humans in the city had one, but she never thought they would drag it all the way to the forest. It must have taken up a lot of manpower to get it here, and they must have brought it for a good reason - they could restrain a dragon with it. Robin knew they could, she had seen them try it out from a distance. The net it shot had been pretty big, enough to pin down five people simultaneously. But this one was even bigger. Robin knew it was more than enough to shoot down Edhyr. She moved to warn the dragon, but had no way to reach her where she could hear. Up until now, they hadn’t had a reason to talk. She couldn’t climb up the dragon’s leg either, seeing as spears and swords were being swung at them from all directions, a few fireballs joining the army from the lone mages in the big group of adventurers opposing Robin and Edhyr.

Robin had no choice but to yell and hope that Edhyr heard her. That’s exactly what she did: “Edhyr! They have a net cannon! You MUST dodge anything that comes of it!” She got no sign that the dragon had heard her. Robin had a desperate look in the cannon’s direction, only to see that it was now ready to shoot, aimed right at Edhyr’s head. A wave of despair washed over her and she could do nothing but watch as the weapon was shot. A giant net flew out of the device. It was made entirely of metal, the chains rattling as it pushed its target to the ground. The big weight gave Edhyr no other option but to tumble to the ground. Even with all her strength, the combined weight and impact of the metal net overpowered the dragon.

As Edhyr fell with a great tremble shaking the ground, Robin, who was holding onto her leg, managed to leap off and make it away from the trajectory of the fall. Unfortunately, she was still stuck under the giant net and it was too heavy for her to wiggle herself out of it. The crushing weight pressed her to the ground, she could only move her fingers and toes as they were not held down by the metal. Tears sprung to Robin’s eyes as the humans ganged up on Edhyr. Swords few at the dragon’s neck as she protested with roars and growls, the shiny scales barely holding up in defense.

It felt like forever, being stuck under the metal net. Robin knew Edhyr’s scales wouldn’t protect her forever. No escape looked possible, both Robin and the dragon were stuck under the net and nobody was coming to save them. Robin’s positivity was crushed, her only thoughts being of death and the happy memories she had made in her life as well as the one evening she had managed to bond with Edhyr. This was the end.

Or was it? Apparently the world thought otherwise, because it had sent Robin a saviour. Robin had never expected anyone to come to her aid anymore. All hope was lost. That was, until a small and very familiar fox showed up to drag Robin out from under the heavy net. Fluff sunk his teeth into Robin’s leg and pulled with all his might. It hurt, but Robin didn’t feel it as much as she should have. Fluff managed to pull Robin into a bigger opening in the metal net so she could wiggle out from underneath it. So she did, eyes still glued to Edhyr. The dragon looked tired, it looked like she had given up a while ago. Now just laying there, waiting for the humans to finally pierce her scales and chop off her head. Robin cried and she wanted to go help in any way possible, but Fluff pulled on her bleeding leg and directed it away from the chaos, into the forest. The humans, having been tasked with killing a dragon, didn’t notice Robin’s absence from under the metal net.

Fluff continued tugging on her leg, but Robin refused to go further. She sat behind a bush just next to the small area Edhyr was lying in, having pulled a couple trees out of the ground or just broken them, so now they lay on the ground, broken. Edhyr, somehow sensing Robin’s presence, shifted a little to look at her with her right eye, her left being blind from the arrow. The dragon gave a small whine. Robin couldn’t hold her tears in any longer and she started crying again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Edhyr. 

When the adventurers finally managed to pierce the dragon’s scales and chop through its neck, when Edhyr took her final breath and closed her eyes, that was when Robin's mind went blank. "Edhyr… Is gone. The only creature to ever truly understand me is gone. Edhyr is never coming back." She was sad, very sad. Her whole world collapsed in front of her. "It's their fault. It's their fault she’s gone." "It's your FAULT!" A wave of rage overtook her and she jumped out of the bushes with a scream, sending as much fire and destruction at the humans as she could, taking out all her anger and sadness on the adventurers and getting her revenge for her fallen friend. Fluff was forgotten, Edhyr's last moments repeating over and over in Robin's head. "YOU DID THIS!" 

The big group of adventurers scattered almost immediately, all of them attempting to dodge the flames that the spirit was sending at them, all escaping from her wrath. Not all succeeded. The fight quickly moved away from the dragon's body lying on the ground, Robin not letting anybody approach Edhyr. The attacks were very effective and Robin wondered why she hadn't used them before. The thought was gone in a split second, replaced with more rage and misery. "If I had attacked then- Edhyr would be alive!" Robin's attacks didn't cease anymore, she only pushed back the mass of humans, out of the forest, leaving behind charred corpses and burning trees in her wake. The forest spirit continued the offense, not caring for anything else anymore, her exhaustion gone entirely.

She didn't care that her body ached. She didn't care that the humans were screaming. She didn't care that she was burning down the forest. She didn't care that there were dead bodies on the ground. She didn't care. None of it mattered. Not anymore. It was all gone anyway.


	4. The aftermath

She didn’t know how many humans had died. She didn’t know how many trees she had burned down. She didn’t know how much time had passed. The only thing Robin knew was that Edhyr was dead, and she could do nothing about it.  _ “If I had chased off- Even killed those humans sooner, she would still be alive,”  _ she thought sadly, pulling her knees closer to her face. She could feel the dampness of the air around her , but she didn’t care about that either. She just sat there, on the ground, next to Edhyr’s still net-covered body, the dragon’s wing covering her a little bit from the soon-to-come rain. Robin’s forest hadn’t had rain for a couple weeks. Usually she would be happy that it was going to rain now. But now was no time to be happy, because Robin’s friend was dead.

It wasn’t a long time that they spent together, but Robin cherished it. It had been her first time seeing a dragon, her first time flying so far up in the sky, her first time someone truly understood her, and they hadn’t even spoken a single word. After all, dragons couldn’t talk. There Robin sat, stuck in her own mind, thinking of what she could have done differently, something, anything, that could have saved Edhyr’s life.

Robin hadn’t seen Fluff for a while either.  _ “Of course. Why should he come back? Everybody leaves me eventually, don’t they?”  _ Small droplets came down from the sky, one hitting Robin’s nose. She closed her eyes. It was cold, and now it was also wet. Robin didn’t like it, but she didn’t bother to move either. She would stay with Edhyr. Always. Tears sprung to Robin’s eyes and she didn’t even try to hold them back. In the rain, the sun setting and rain clouds covering up the stars, Robin cried for many hours.

☯

She didn’t know how many hours or minutes had passed, but Robin had fallen asleep next to Edhyr and just now woke up. She didn’t bother to sit up anymore, instead laying down on the ground with her back touching Edhyr’s body. It wasn’t warm anymore, all the life having drained out of it. Robin’s eyes were closed and she listened to the birds chirping, the water droplets falling to the ground, the gentle noise of the river flowing in the distance, animals walking around. Life was moving on. Robin wasn’t. She refused to. Edhyr was the best thing to ever happen to her and she didn’t plan on letting it go. She would stay here, by Edhyr’s side.

Yet it felt wrong. Robin made the choice to stay, but it didn’t fit right with her nature. Subconsciously, she didn’t want to dwell on it. Deep down, she wanted to move on. But how could she? How could she just leave her friend? Edhyr was too big for Robin to bury, too. The area’s grass was covered in blood and Robin didn’t even want to look at the direction Edhyr’s head lay, detached from her body, eyes now glassy and void of life. How could she just leave her here like this? She couldn't, it was that simple. She couldn’t- Wouldn’t leave Edhyr.

_ “...you know you want to.”  _ Robin told herself. She did know. She wanted to skip by the riverside and hunt fish with Fluff like she did before humans came to meddle with the forest. She wanted to curl up in her hollow tree to sleep again. She wanted to walk through her patrol routes every day to see what had changed in the short time she had been away. She wanted to be the lively and happy Robin who always expected the best and never yearned for violence, looking for peaceful solutions every time she came across a problem. 

It wasn’t going to happen, Robin knew. She could never forget about Edhyr. This would stick with her wherever she went, however much time passed. So it just made more sense to… Pause her life? Just stop it altogether? Stay here, in one spot for the rest of her life, however long it would be? No, Robin didn’t like that idea either. It was too… Boring? Sad? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t like it.

A grave. She could make a grave for Edhyr. She had to. Even if she couldn’t bury her, she had to at least make a grave. Robin gathered enough motivation to open her eyes and sit up. She had a quick look around. The nearby trees were still burnt to some extent. The grass was still bloody, but most of the red had washed away with the rain. Robin was surprised to see the blood still red and not the tone of brown that dried blood usually takes.  _ “Dragon blood must be special.”  _ She yawned widely and loudly, inhaling a dose of oxygen before doing anything else. Robin stood up sloppily and stood for a couple seconds, hunched over a bit more than she usually would be. With a newfound determined glint in her eye, Robin walked further into the woods, looking for a fitting stone for a grave. Not too far from Edhyr, of course, but further than she had been for… Hours? Days? Who knows how long had passed by this point.

For a while Robin walked around, looking for a stone of good size that would fit a grave for a dragon. Not really paying attention to the forest anymore, she only kept her eyes on the ground, scanning the grass for bigger rock pieces. She knew a couple of them were around here. That’s why she was so shocked when she suddenly saw boots, of all things, from the corner of her eye.  _ “Hold on- Boots?!”  _ Robin flinched back in a split second, hands already prepared to attack. Only humans wore boots in the forest, after all. Robin herself was barefoot most of the time, though sometimes she used magic to mold small shoes out of some water. It was a fun pastime and she could walk on water with them, so they weren’t useless either.

It took a few seconds for Robin to register that the human was holding their- No, his hands up in surrender. Robin dropped her hands to her sides, but didn’t step closer. “...Jason?”

“Robin! I finally found you!” Jason had a beaming smile on her face. Robin was just numb and kind of confused why Jason was so happy to see her. She sure remembered Jason trying to kill Edhyr just a couple days - or however much time had passed - ago. “How are you back already? It took almost a week to get to the cave,” Robin wondered out loud. Jason also appeared confused, giving a worried look at Robin’s words. “Robin… It’s been two months since you flew off with that dragon.”

“Oh. How?” Robin didn’t really feel anything special at the revelation that she had slept for two months and hadn’t even noticed other than a spark of curiosity.

“I have no idea. Did you mess up your sense of time that bad?”

“I- I don’t know- I took a nap but-”

“That must have been one long nap. Anyway, I couldn’t find you by the river anywhere so I’ve been coming to the forest every couple days and walk around looking for you. Looks like luck is finally on my side! Where did you disappear to?” Jason asked, the smile back on his face. “I wanted to ask about that dragon, it doesn’t appear they’re with you. People were talking about one it town so I figured that’s the one. Where is it?”

“She’s… Gone,” Robin said simply, not meeting Jason’s eyes. His smile fell yet again. “Something happen?” he asked, genuent concern in his voice.

“It’s nothing. Why did you try to find me?” Robin asked instead, changing the topic.

“Well, last we saw you, you prevented us from killing a beast that we had travelled nearly a week to slay, then ignored all common sense and went way too close to the beast and then it freaked out and pulled you with it when it left. We were afraid you might be dead in the cave already, so a dragon kidnapping you tripled our worries. I’ve been trying to find you forever. Evelyn also came back, she’s keeping an eye out in town. Firo is at the library, researching something again. Nyx is going ‘round doing quests and Mona… Well, Mona has been feeling down lately. She liked you, so when you left she got really sad and has been ever since. But I’m pretty sure seeing you would cheer her right up!”

“...Right. I don’t- Sorry, Jason.” Robin didn’t really know how to put her feelings into words, so she opted to just turn around and walk away, leaving a confused Jason behind in her wake.

“...Robin? Robin!” Jason didn’t run after Robin, thankfully, but he still yelled her name in confusion, trying to figure out what he said wrong.

Robin walked off to find the gravestone she had been looking for previously. She still hadn’t found a stone of good size. It was difficult to find one, so Robin thought that maybe she could chip a part of the cliff free. If she didn’t find one soon, she would probably do just that. A couple minutes passed with her scanning the ground - no result. Robin gave up on finding one and went to chip a piece out of the cliff instead.

The walk to the small cliff wasn’t a long one, but it felt like forever. It had been just days- No, two months ago that Robin sat here with Edhyr before the human adventurers came to chase down the dragon. She couldn’t help but feel sad again as she chipped the cliffside with sharp rock pieces of her own. The elemental magic really came in handy most of the time. A good chunk of rock soon fell free of the cliff, leaving an indent where it had been previously. The rock reached Robin’s knees from the ground and it looked heavy, but Robin wasn’t worried about the weight. A combination of air manipulation and rock reshaping would get the chunk to the right place no problem. 

Robin first reshaped the rock to be a flat slate, then created small wind currents to direct the slate towards where Edhyr was lying, holding the piece of stone in the air with her fingers. It weighed much less with the air around it also lifting it up, but Robin couldn’t rely on that alone. It took a bit longer than it usually would to get to Edhyr from the cliff - about half an hour to walk by the same road they went with the adventurers chasing them. Broken down trees showed her the path and she followed it without further direction needed.

A wave of sadness washed over her when she saw Edhyr again. She set the stone down next to the small area now clear of trees, leaning it on a burnt one. She used a spell to light the tip of her finger on fire and burnt Edhyr’s name into the stone.

_ Edhyr, the dragon of gems _

_ May your flight be eternal. _

Robin was happy with the message. Well, not happy, but satisfied. She couldn’t be happy anymore at this point. She looked back at the dragon. Edhyr’s scales had lost their shine, but the blood still looked fresh. Now that Robin thought about it, the body wasn’t even decaying.  _ “Dragons must really be unique.”  _ Robin stared at the stone for a good amount of time. She didn’t know how long it was, but she just thought of the moments she spent with Edhyr.

“So that’s what you meant when you said they were gone,” a male voice said from right behind Robin. She swooped around, ready to throw a punch at the person- “Just me! Just me! Sora, you’re easily aggravated.” Jason stood there, hands up in surrender and flinched back. He had obviously been eyeing Edhyr’s head lying severed from her body. Robin lowered her hands. “I didn’t hear you.”

“You sound so tired,” Jason noted.

“I just slept for two months,” Robin replied in a deadpan voice.

“You still sound tired.” A moment of silence passed with the two staring at each other. Jason sighed. “Actually… Today is one of the last days I could come to the forest. It was my last hope to find you and it was pure luck that I actually did,” he admitted. “I’ll be going on a bigger mission with the team, back to the capital. This is just a smaller border city that I happened to stumble into.”

“I see.” Robin didn’t really know what else to reply. Would she miss Jason? She wasn't sure. She was doing just fine before meeting him and she had actually spent only a week with him, travelling and such. She hadn’t known him for long. Yet a piece of her shattered even further.  _ “Jason is leaving too.”  _ Robin stayed quiet. She didn’t trust her voice enough to not shatter halfway through a sentence. This should not impact her as much as it did. Robin was too familiar with this feeling lately. Jason stood next to Robin for a little while before stepping closer and giving Robin a hug. “I’ll come back to visit you,” he said quietly to Robin’s ear. Robin’s eyes started to water a little, but she didn’t reply, just grabbed Jason around the neck and nodded barely noticeably. They stood like that for a couple seconds. Robin was first to let go. She looked away, anywhere other than at Jason. Said adventurer took his leave shortly, leaving Robin alone in the area with Edhyr, the metal net she was still under, and the dragon’s gravestone.

Robin stood alone for a couple minutes, mulling over the day’s events, before deciding to go for a short walk on her patrol route. She headed back through the woods, crossed the river and to her hollow tree. It reminded her of Fluff. Robin hadn’t seen the fox in ages. She wondered where he was.

From her tree, Robin again walked upstream of the river to the old oak tree and right, straight until a tall pine tree and right again. Straight until the cliff, the very same one she and Edhyr had spent the night at. Down from the cliff, towards the human city for a little while until a clearing. Robin navigated by the big bush already familiar to her and found herself back by the river. 

Usually there wouldn’t be much to note about the patrol other than maybe a tree had fallen somewhere or a new animal trail, but nothing exciting. But today was different. Today she saw arrows sticking out of trees near the river, the old oak had a couple of snapped branches like someone had tried to climb it and the tree had snapped under the weight - it was old, after all. A small shelter was built under the pine tree - someone had spent the night there recently. The clearing she walked through also had a few slashes on the trees as well as burnt grass. Clearly, human activity in the woods had tripled, if not more, in the 2 months that Robin had been asleep.

_ “Great sleep that was, I’m more tired than I was before,”  _ Robin thought sarcastically. She didn’t use sarcasm often, but she wasn’t in the mood to be nice today. She was tired and sad. Robin kept an eye out for humans in action the whole time as she walked, but couldn’t find any more signs of human activity on her way back to Edhyr. 

Robin made it her mission to get the metal net off of Edhyr - even if it meant climbing up using the scales and heating the chains until the connections melted down. But that was just really hot fire and Robin knew fire magic, so it wasn’t a big deal. The most troubling part was not falling off, since the scales were shiny and smooth, but Robin didn’t really care if she was hurt - it was just bothersome to climb back up just to fall again so Robin did her best not to fall.

It took forever for the chain to actually get to the point of heat where Robin could pull it apart without problems and Robin had to melt it in quite a few places - the net was huge, as was the dragon it was meant for. Overall Robin counted 27 different spots where she would have to break up the chain to make the pieces light enough to be able to slide them off and down to the forest floor. Sometime during her work the Sun started to set too, making her job even harder since it was harder to see in the darkness. Thankfully, Robin had her trusty magic to fix her problem - her hands were glowing like stars just seconds later.

When Robin finished, it was pitch black. If not for Robin’s enchanted hand, she wouldn’t be able to see anything at all. The clouds were covering the moon completely, so no light reached the ground at the moment. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, Robin shut off all lights and enjoyed the darkness. After all, it wasn’t every day it was dark like the bottom of the ocean, where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. It was mysterious. Robin enjoyed it.

This time, Robin sat in front of Edhyr’s gravestone, eyes closed as she tapped her foot lightly with her finger, waiting for something to happen. Anything, really. She was done with her task and had nothing else to do at the moment but just enjoy the darkness as much as she could with her constant state of sadness. Robin waited for daylight to think of what she could do next. Maybe she could meet a couple of adventurers in the woods? Who knew? There, sitting on the ground, Robin fell asleep yet again.

She jerked awake when light suddenly hit her eyes. “Augh-” Robin jerked upright and rubbed her eyes. It took a few seconds to get used to the sudden lightness of the world around her. Robin had a quick look at the sky. The clouds were still mostly there just as they had been last night, but a couple gaps allowed sunbeams to cut through and apparently hit sleeping forest spirits in the eye. Robin stood up from the ground with a small grumble. It was still pretty early, the Sun was barely high enough to reach over the treetops. Robin wasted no more time to walk to her daily patrol route, only after having a glance at Edhyr before she left.

It still bothered her how humans had just taken over the forest. Plants were trampled here and there and entire berry bushes had gone missing in Robin’s absence. The forest spirit’s activities were more important than Robin ever thought, it appeared. She wondered what would happen if she disappeared entirely. Would the forest keep growing? Would it just die? Would it stay as is? Would it stay as is and humans would ruin life and kill the forest? Robin didn’t know. She just walked along the riverside in search of humans. Humans that were alive, that she could talk to. Humans that would tell her why there were so many adventurers in the forest. Humans that wouldn’t attack her on sight. She couldn’t be sure how many would. Some preferred to run when they noticed her antlers and scream about Sora something or the other. Robin had picked the word up for cursing a couple years ago after she heard one adventurer say it when it started raining all of a sudden. It was a short word and it had a nice aggressive jingle to it.

Luckily, Robin didn’t have to search for long. She heard footsteps a bit further onward and decided to observe whoever was there from afar before confronting them. Robin dove into the bushes and crawled along the forest floor, closer to where the noise originated from, stopping behind a medium-sized tree. What Robin noticed first was the long hair of the person - it reached their lower back and was a nice shade of really dark brown; Robin almost mistook it for black. The person’s clothing looked fancy, the edges were decorated with patterns and the colours were way brighter than what Robin was used to. She herself wore a simple black shirt and a purple skirt - they complimented her hair, she found - but her clothes were of course magically made. All the adventurers on the other hand wore brown, orange and other yellowish tones as well as some white. A select few stood out with their fancy blue scarves, but really only a couple. This person was wearing a red robe though, the upper edge was covered in fur and the bottom had a beautiful repeating floral pattern of yarn. It looked very detailed and left Robin staring in awe for a couple seconds.  _ “Such beautiful things exist…?”  _

Robin couldn’t see the person’s front, since they were standing with their back turned to Robin. She noticed they were wearing one big sword on their back and they had no visible bag. The coat looked like it would have big pockets, Robin thought. Ah, pockets. Robin always wished she had pockets, but her skirt wouldn’t allow it. Maybe once she got pants…  _ “Stop daydreaming about clothes! Focus, Robin!”  _ she told herself, directing her attention back to the person by the river. They were holding a… Map, maybe? It was a big piece of fabric and it looked pretty worn out. It had smaller and bigger symbols on it and many lines that often crossed as far as Robin could see. The only logical explanation would be some sort of map. The person was spinning it around and scratching their head while trying to figure out what direction they should move in - at least that’s what Robin thought they were doing.

She didn’t dare go any closer just yet, she had to see the person’s face first to determine if they were aggressive or not. It was tense, waiting for them to finally turn around. The person stared at the map for what felt like ages before throwing their hand to their face and sighing deeply, the map falling to their side in their left hand as the right one grabbed their own face. Robin could get a peek of their mouth, but their hand was covering their nose and eyes, so she waited longer.

The person walked around in a small circle for a couple minutes, still trying their best to make sense of the map and clearly not getting anywhere. At some point they crouched down and set it on the ground instead of holding it, again sighing deeply in resignation. It seemed that every couple minutes they abandoned the project, only to turn back when they remembered they had nothing else to do and had to figure out where to go. Robin found it funny.

After a few minutes of careful observation - and still not managing to pinpoint the human’s gender, to Robin’s frustration -, Robin deemed the human safe to approach. She stayed as quiet as she could as she navigated around the tree, still crawling just to be safe. Robin ended up standing in front of the very same tree, faced with the scary thought of socialisation.  _ “I have to say something now, right?”  _ “You need help with the map?”

The human visibly jumped and yelped, spinning around on their spot, hand flying to the hilt of their sword on their shoulder. Both Robin and the human froze on the spot, neither daring to move. The human was first to break the silence: “Where did you come from?” Their voice didn’t give Robin any clue about their gender either, landing in the tiny middle space of them.

“From the forest,” Robin replied, gesturing to the general direction that she had come from. “You need help with the map?” she repeated her question, pointing to the map on the ground by the water. The person seemed to hesitate. “I do need help, but you’re a little young to be wandering the forest on your own. Plus you have antlers. Which is not normal. So I don’t really trust you and I doubt that you can blame me for that.”

“No, I can’t. I’m the forest spirit.”

“Oh.” The person seemed to think over the title for a little bit. “So, you’re not going to kill me?” they asked, their voice rising a bit at the end of the sentence. Robin shook her head. “I don’t generally kill humans.”

“Alright.” A few seconds of silence pass with the two staring at each other. “So about the map-” Robin started again. The human quickly picked up the map and brought it closer to Robin, still flinching away when she bowed down to have a closer look at it. The map was much more detailed than the one Robin had tried to draw once. The lines were smoother and there were many more details than Robin’s map had - she had just marked the clearings and cliffs, not specific plants in their appropriate spots. “Who made this?” she asked, curious about the creation.

“Well, I got it from a merchant so I’m not sure but he mentioned that a person who often visits the adventurer made it.”

“Interesting. It’s very accurate, so they must have spent quite a bit of time mapping everything accurately.”

“Huh? Do you really know the entire forest that well?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Robin replied nonchalantly. The person seemed to retreat a bit, giving the reply some thought. “How old are you?”

  
  


“Thirty one winters.”

“Why not years?”

“I don’t know how many years have passed, for I don’t know my exact date of creation,” Robin explained shortly.

“You don’t have a birthday?” The human seemed to sadden a little.

“No. Where are you headed?”

“Huh?” The person seemed confused for a moment. “Oh, right! The map! I have to get to wherever the spider lilies grow, but I can’t seem to find them on the map.” Robin nodded along. “Describe them to me.”

“They’re this high,” the person gestured just above their knee, “and grow near water, I'm told. I think they were red and looked like these messy baskets in the middle with arches coming from the bottom and facing up-” Robin spent no more time listening and turned to walk away. She knew exactly where these plants grew and it wasn’t far at all. “Wait- Where are you going?” the person asked in confusion as they ran up behind Robin.

“I’m taking you to these plants.”

“You know where they grow?”

“Yes.”

“That’s awesome! Thank you!” They seemed actually happy and brightened up visibly. “What’s your name by the way?”

“Robin. Yours?”

“I’m Jordy! Nice to meet you!”

“Right.” The two walked by the riverside, going upstream. Robin wasn’t sure if asking for one’s gender was appropriate right now, so she didn’t. Even the name didn’t give any clarity! Robin truly had no idea who this person was. Nothing about them gave anything away - not the voice, body shape, hair, name, nothing! It frustrated Robin, but she decided to stay out of it for now and just show the person where the spider lilies grew. “Nice to meet you too, I guess,” Robin mumbled.

“So, how much do you know about the forest?”

“Humans come here too often. There are too many quests here. Take your lilies and don’t come back here, I have enough trouble as is.”

“What do you mean? Everyone knows that all the quests are in the forest! I can’t just never return!”

“That’s exactly my problem. All the quests are here, which brings adventurers here, which means humans are destroying the forest bit by bit! Plants and animals are dying, the River’s flow has slowed down quite a bit due to makeshift bridges everywhere and the trees show slashes and arrows in them as if they were some sort of practice dummies! This has to stop as fast as possible.”

“Oh, I see.” Jordy stayed quiet after that, clearly deep in thought. It didn't take long for the two to arrive at the designated area. It was an even patch of land with a couple trees littering the vicinity. The ground was moist and partly muddy. "Here you go," Robin said, pointing at the cluster of spider lilies already in sight. "Take your flowers and get out of here." She left Jordy alone with their flowers with the unsaid threat hanging above their head along with Robin's words.

Robin continued her explorations of the forest, telling every adventurer she saw to leave. Unfortunately, so far she had only seen one: Jordy. The riverside didn't seem to have any humans near, though signs of activity - mostly makeshift bridges - were present every now and then. A chopped tree hanging over the water or a big boulder blocking the flow of the river altogether, clearly the work of a beginner mage. Since the riverside was clear, Robin headed over to the clearings to check them one by one.

The first clearing, closest to the riverside, was clear of live humans but another row of slash marks was visible along the trees. Robin scowled at them for a moment before moving on to the second clearing, more towards the cliff she visited most frequently nowadays. That clearing wasn’t so clear - Robin could hear loud speaking and even yelling quite the distance away. She didn’t slow her pace as she walked to the clearing, determination shining in her eyes. The humans took a couple seconds to notice her, about the same time it took Robin to count how many there were. The three humans in the clearing, all male, took a look at Robin and… One started screaming? Indeed, one of them just screamed and turned to run away. The second looked between Robin and his screaming teammate in confusion before noticing the antlers on Robin’s head and joining the former in a quick exit from the area. Fortunately, this one didn’t scream bloody murder. But the third human didn’t run. The final man instead grabbed the bow that had been resting on his back as well as an arrow and swiftly aimed at Robin, who had stopped walking to observe the fleeing humans in confusion. The arrow took off just a second later and Robin barely managed to duck so she wouldn’t lose her head. Clearly, this one adventurer was hostile and not fooling around and, for whatever reason, figured Robin a threat. Robin didn’t really care for what the humans did as long as they left the forest, so she responded to the arrow with a wave of ice between her and the human, blocking off any further attacks.  _ “I should freeze water more often. It’s way more useful when it’s solid,”  _ Robin thought with a small smirk, already scaling the wall to send further attacks at the human.  _ “Some sharp rocks would get the message across, would they not?” _

__ It didn’t take long for the adventurer to leave offense and focus only on defense, since Robin gave him no time to aim whatsoever, sending rock shards flying every few seconds. He soon bailed, leaving the area entirely. Robin, happy with her accomplishment, started melting down the huge ice barrier she had made, all the while thinking about how the first two humans had run away from her when they had noticed her antlers. Why would they run away from her? She didn’t remember meeting them before so Robin had no idea why they just ran. Either way, she wasn’t complaining. It made her job easier, after all!

It took a good 20 minutes to actually melt down the wall to an acceptable size - a little bit shorter than Robin herself was -, but Robin didn’t bother going even further. Her hand had been on fire long enough for today! Instead, she moved on to check the next clearing.

Her odd day continued in the same direction. The third clearing was bare of humans, but Robin decided to stay there for a little while to make sure that nobody was nearby either - which was when a group of adventurers rushed past, all jogging and panting as if trying to get away from something, headed towards the city. Only one of them noticed Robin sitting in the grass, but them adding to their speed suddenly urged all others to look around in confusion, resulting in the whole group glancing at Robin from the corner of their eye and trying to get away as quickly and quietly as possible. Robin was left confused by their behaviour yet again.  _ “Wait- They recognize me! The adventurers recognize me and fear me!”  _ Robin thought, punching the air lightly to celebrate her new discovery. She figured it out! The fist was lowered pretty quick.  _ “...Why do they fear me?” _

☯

Robin continued to explore the forest for the next couple of days, observing the reactions of the adventurers she spotted. Some of them prepared for a fight as soon as they noticed Robin’s presence, but most just ran from her and she still didn’t know why. And so, being fed up with the humans being so damn complicated, Robin decided to ask one about what in the name of Sora was going on. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounded. When anybody - and Robin did mean anybody - crossed Robin’s determined and almost angry gaze, they immediately turned to flee. Not just humans either, animals also avoided Robin. That, of course, made her even angrier. What was before mild annoyance was now a small grudge against anything and everything living she crossed in the forest, be it humans, birds, or squirrels.

The next time she met a human wandering the woods, Robin didn’t give them time to notice her, instead restraining them with vines almost immediately. The adventurer had been walking down a small forest path when Robin noticed them from her new favourite hiding spot - on top of the trees. It was laughably easy to grab a hold of their ankles and stop them from going anywhere. Robin found it funny, but now was not the time to laugh. Now was the time for some answers. She jumped down from the tree, directly in front of the human. Said human, who had previously been tugging on the vines holding their legs in place with confusion, yelped and tried to jump back, which didn’t really work out since their legs were stuck to the ground. They instead ended up losing their balance and falling over with a loud thump, their legs bending at an angle that was painful to even look at. Robin decided to loosen the vines a bit, giving the adventurer’s feet space to move a bit.

“Look at me,” Robin demanded, standing on the pathway with her arms crossed over her chest, staring at the poor adventurer in a heap on the ground. It looked like they were struggling to get up, but Robin didn’t care. She wanted answers. Now that Robin had time to notice the human’s appearance, she briefly looked it over. It appeared that they were a male, though pretty short for the age they seemed to be - Robin estimated about 19, but from the height she could also guess 14. He had blond hair, only reaching his jaw and no further, so short as well.

“Ugh, you’re hopeless.” Robin grabbed a hold of their wrist and pulled them back up on their feet again, not willing to wait for the human to  _ finally  _ get up on his own. “You’re pathetic,” she commented in a mutter. The human seemed to hear and his shoulder slumped just a little. A ting of guilt sounded in Robin’s mind, but she ignored it for now. “Look at me,” she repeated, staring the man in the eye. The adventurer finally looked up to meet her stare. “Good. I want you to tell me why-” Robin didn’t manage to finish her sentence, since the human suddenly started pulling on the vines still keeping his feet in place violently and struggling to get away. His gaze had probably wandered away from Robin’s eyes and to her odd colour of hair instead, where he had noticed her antlers. Robin sighed in frustration. “That! That is exactly what I want to know. WHY, pray tell, are you so SCARED of me?!” Robin sounded almost hysteric, even to herself.

The blond stopped struggling for a moment and looked back at Robin, whose eyes were watering slightly by now in frustration. “Why are you humans so scared of me?” she asked again, throwing her hands in the air and letting them fall back to her sides. She took a few seconds to stare at the adventurer, waiting for an answer, but she got none. “Whatever. You’re all useless anyway. Killing the forest. You do no good to anyone.” Robin turned away in her mutterings, calling back the vines restraining the man and already walking away from the human.

“You’re the forest spirit.”

Robin halted, stopping in her tracks.  _ “He replied? He replied to me!”  _ “What does that have to do with anything?” she asked. The human averted his gaze. This topic was clearly uncomfortable to him.

“Then you’re the one who murdered over a hundred men two months ago.”  _ “Oh…” _ Robin suddenly understood why humans fled from her. If she had truly killed that many of them in her fit of rage after Edhyr died-

It made perfect sense why they would be scared of her. The men that had been tasked with killing the dragon had all been adventurers, had they not? When a bunch came back from the forest, saying that a green-haired girl with antlers was murdering other adventurers left and right, it would make sense that all other adventurers would keep an eye out for that girl with antlers and stay away in fear of also being killed, while some would look for revenge or just fight in self defense.

_ “Oh dear. Well, my job is easier now at the very least, since humans stay away on purpose,”  _ Robin thought. She shifted her attention back to the blond standing just a couple meters away from her. “...Thank you.” Without further communication, she loosened the vines to let the human go, scaled a nearby tree, and got away from the blond adventurer.

No adventurer entered the forest in the few following days, the word having clearly gotten out about the forest spirit being active once again and telling adventurers to leave. Robin wondered if the reason there were so many humans in the forest in the first place was that she just wasn’t anywhere to be seen and didn’t send the one or two morons practicing their archery on trees back home for two months. They must have gained courage and gone deeper into the woods and upon no further resistance, gone even further. Nobody was stopping them either and the Adventurer's Guild ended up posting quests for the woods since it was usually an area off limits for adventurers. The forest spirit would make sure of it.

So, in the end, it all came back to Robin. Her influence was indeed greater than she ever knew. Her presence was what kept the forest alive and safe from humans. Morbidly, Robin again wondered what would happen to her or the forest if one of them were to stop existing one day. Would she die without the forest? Would the forest die without her? She didn’t know and hoped she would never have to find out either.

☯

Robin was tired. Robin was very tired. But she could not rest now. For the past week - or, at least Robin thought it was a week, it could be more than that - she had been patrolling the very edge of the forest and doing her best to keep any and all humans out of the woods. The forest needed time to recover. During the day Robin would walk along the forest edge, turning everyone approaching away and making it clear that the area was off limits. During the night, she went around and did her best to recover nature from human activity. She destroyed bridges the adventurers had made, removed arrows from trees that humans had shot and covered up damaged plants with grass and vines. A few humans managed to sneak past sometimes, but Robin always hunted them down and deposited them, not quite gently, outside the city walls in a not-so-neat package of vines and ice. And so she continued, on and on, without breaks for sleeping or eating. She was dead on her feet and not quite present. Robin was forgetting how she got to places, often sleep-walking and even sleep-fighting to get all her tasks done. She hadn’t seen Jason or any of his friends for weeks, she suddenly remembered one time. She wondered how they were doing.

  
She still visited Edhyr every day. Well, she thought and hoped it was every day, but it was quite possible she accidentally missed the sky turning dark a couple of times and it had instead been 3 days, but who knew? Thus; every day. Robin had noticed that Edhyr’s scales had started to come free, now falling off and revealing a layer of tough skin underneath pretty often. She collected a few of these scales from the ground and buried them under a tree nearby, saving them for a time when she might need them. She actually gathered quite a good amount of these, enough that she could even make a glove out of them.  _ “Wait. You can’t make gloves out of scales-”  _ Yeah, Robin was pretty sure now was a good time to take a nap.  _ “But I can’t sleep! I have to make sure the adventurers don’t-”  _ Robin was out before she knew it, having passed out from exhaustion.


	5. Time flies

Robin only knew black. The world was black. She never saw anything for a long time. She didn’t know how many hours had passed - had it been longer than a day by now? She could still hear louder sounds. She could recognize the sound of rain pouring from the skies and thunder echoing in the distance, she could recognize yelling and screaming. She would have been confused about why somebody was yelling in the forest in the first place, but she was too tired to care. She just slept, forgetting all about her questions in mere seconds. Robin felt warm.  _ “It’s raining, shouldn’t it be cold and wet-?”  _ That thought, too, was gone in seconds, despite Robin’s efforts to figure out the oddity. It was all black.

Robin only realized later - how much later, she didn’t know - that it was getting lighter. It was still very dark, but it wasn’t black anymore. It was gray. An odd shade of pinkish gray that she felt was familiar, but couldn’t really put a finger on it. Robin could hear thunder again. It started suddenly, like time had suddenly skipped forward and Robin had just barely managed to catch up. One second it was quiet and dark, the next loud thunder struck the ground somewhere and rain was pouring. If she focused really hard, Robin could feel water dripping onto her, but not at the pace that rain usually does. It was slower. Like it was dripping from a point above, not pouring from the clouds. A loud ringing sound echoed in her ears. And just as suddenly as it had started, it was gone. It was all silent again.

It could have been mere minutes that the rain lasted, it could’ve been hours. Robin didn’t know, she’d lost all sense of time. In this dark world, nothing existed. No visuals, no dreams, no colour, nothing. But it was getting lighter and that gave Robin hope. Hope for a future beyond the darkness.  _ “If I have a future, I must have had a past. What was I in the past…?”  _ Robin had trouble remembering. What had she been before the darkness? All she could remember was a beautiful dragon and a view of the sky above the clouds. It was just one image that flashed in her mind for a moment, but it was a visual. The first visual Robin had seen in this dark world. And so, Robin remembered it. Not in detail, that was impossible with the mere second she had seen the image for. But she remembered the view from what looked like on top of the dragon. 

It was lighter, Robin could see it. Compared to the black that she had seen before, this was much lighter, more orange or pink than black, but still quite dark. She had never seen anything quite like it, but it felt familiar somehow. Robin didn’t know why.

When the darkness suddenly retracted with a bang accompanying it, leaving behind only a deep orange-reddish colour, Robin was scared.  _ “What will happen now?”  _ So far, she had been safe. In nothingness, yes, but safe nonetheless, protected from harm. Away from anything else living. Away from the world everything else lived in. The thought of returning to that world scared her. But she had no choice, did she? She had to lift the barrier and peek behind it. And so she did, albeit reluctantly.

Robin opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized that they had been closed in the first place. She didn’t remember closing them, anyway. But she closed them just as fast. The sudden light, the  _ white _ in her world of darkness was so intense, it hurt.  _ “How do I- What do I do now?”  _ Robin didn’t know. She was brave enough to pull aside the curtain between her and the world. She  _ wanted  _ to pull it aside, to look at the world and to return to her friends, even. But she couldn’t. So she tried again. With a miniscule peek at the world around, the brightness was increased a hundredfold. But it didn’t hurt this time, it was just uncomfortable. Robin continued at a slow pace, opening her eyes more bit by bit. 

She had done it. She was free of the darkness, free of the black. It was blue now. She saw light blue with little tufts of white occasionally entering her field of view. It was familiar, she remembered it from the image she saw of the dragon, just now she wasn’t up there with the clouds, but now she was on the ground and looking up. And looking up meant that she was currently lying on the ground.

Robin made a move to get up, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move her hands, she couldn’t move her legs, she could only look around. It scared her. Robin started thrashing, attempting to get free of the prison she didn’t know she was in until now. It wasn’t a strong prison by any means, since just seconds later, one of Robin’s hand was free, stretching out toward the sky up above. It took a couple of moments for her to piece it together.  _ “My hand…”  _ With a hurry, Robin moved to push herself up. With only one of her two hands, she didn’t quite sit up, instead flipping over, but it was much harder than it should have been to lift up from the ground.

Robin struggled for a little bit, but eventually managed to roll herself over so she was face up again and sat up. A quick look at where she had been laying just minutes earlier had her putting puzzle pieces together at a rapid pace.  _ “Why was I in the ground?”  _ Sure enough, an indent was left in the ground where she had been laying. The surrounding area was covered in moss, but this spot was just exposed dirt. Robin turned her look to her feet. They were covered in dirt and even moss, to some extent.  _ “Eeeh?! There’s moss growing on me?!”  _ Robin hurried to scrape it off, but got distracted in the activity when she spotted a giant rock in her peripheral vision. She turned to look at it from curiosity. Robin was promptly horrified at the sight of a giant skull five times her height. It looked like it belonged to some sort of big lizard.  _ “EDHYR!”  _ Robin realized a couple seconds later, standing up and rushing - well, it was more like wobbling on her feet - over to the skull to check for any other remains of the dragon that had been there just before she went to sleep. She could see just two indents in the mossy ground in a bonelike shape, but nothing else there to show the dragon’s previous existence. 

Actually, now that Robin thought about it, the terrain was also different. There were small hills near the edges of where the dragon’s body would lay as if dirt had piled up next to it. That also explained how Robin had been mostly covered with dirt and underground to some extent, but Robin had no idea how the ground level rose such a huge amount. Robin could see a couple trees crossing over the ground where they hadn’t been before, probably having fallen down in a storm or something. One of them looked fairly fresh as the roots were ripped out of the ground, exposing plain dirt. Robin recalled the bang that had woken her in the first place - could this have been the cause of the loud noise?  _ “Wait, how is Edhyr just a skeleton now?? Weren’t the scales just falling off? Wait, scales!”  _ Robin’s thought was interrupted when she remembered the pile of scales she had buried by the tree. She walked over to check if they were still there. It took a couple of minutes of digging and Robin’s fingers really didn’t like the labour, but Robin managed to hit something hard in the dirt. She pulled out a dull purple scale.  _ “So they’re still here…”  _

After a minute or two of pulling scales from the ground, Robin began to feel kind of cold. It was pretty windy as well and she was surprised - it was never this windy in the middle of a forest! With a quick spell, Robin swapped out her previously dirty skirt and shirt for a long hooded jacket and shorts underneath. It covered her nicely and was comfortable, which was good enough for Robin.

Now that Robin had a jacket - with pockets! - she could bring way more stuff with her. She placed the dull and dirty scales in the inner pocket, safely away from sight. Robin decided to give Edhyr’s grave a visit as well. It wasn’t completely gone, thank Sora, but the writing on the stone was surprisingly faded. Robin took a minute to stand there and remember Edhyr before moving on to see what in the name of Sora had happened while she was asleep.

It didn’t take long before she got an answer to one of her questions, but many more questions popped up simultaneously. Just a short walk away from where Robin had previously been, the forest was wiped out, trees broken down and charred from fire in places, leaving Robin to wonder what had happened here. She continued walking in the windy plains, leaving behind the giant skull in search of the city in the walls.

Yet another round of questions swarmed Robin’s mind when she finally saw the city in view, but the wall was broken down on one side. It was as if it had been hit with something giant, Robin had no idea what it could have been. There were no humans in sight. Robin had no further way to reject the truth.  _ “Oh, Sora, I did it again. I slept way too long, didn’t I? How long has it been? The city is gone, the forest has burnt down and there are no humans, not even adventurers anywhere.”  _ Robin was scared and curious, so she kept going.

The city gate was still intact, but the wall to the left side of it was gone barely a meter from the entrance. Robin wandered into the abandoned town to have a look around. The streets were partly covered in rubble near the wall. The town square was clear and it looked like people had been shopping here just yesterday, but the carts were abandoned. Robin snatched a nice white and red fabric scarf from one of the stalls. She didn’t mind that the colour had faded a bit. Nobody else was here to purchase or use it anyway, so she shouldn't feel bad for taking it, should she?

The city overall looked like people had left it urgently. Robin didn’t know if humans ever came here anymore, but if so, not often. It didn’t look like people had died - there weren’t any bodies or bones around, so Robin took an assumption and said that they had to evacuate for some reason or the other.

Which was exactly why Robin was so surprised when she heard footsteps approaching the town square from the same direction she had just come from. She was curious and didn’t move to hide, instead wanting to meet whoever was approaching and learn more about what happened when she was asleep, so Robin stood in her place, faced towards where the footsteps originated from. Actually, now that Robin thought about it, wasn't there some sort of odd echo in those footsteps? Indeed, it sounded off somehow. It didn’t take long to figure it out when four leather-boot-covered feet turned around the corner - two humans! 

The humans looked very young, Robin noted. About the same age that she looked like if she was human - of course, being a forest spirit, Robin was way older than what she looked. One of the two had blond short hair, the other long and raven black that reached past their shoulders and probably down their back. Robin took an assumption and guessed that the blond was male and the brunette a female human, since there were no further signs other than hair indicating otherwise with the leather pants and fluffy coats covering the two from head to toe other than their fingertips.

The two young humans were gazing around, expressions of wonder and sadness visible on their faces. Robin still stood there, waiting for them to notice her. The blond was first to see Robin standing and staring at them and quickly reached out a hand in front of the other to stop them from moving forward. The brunette gave the blond a confused look, but it turned to understanding when she also noticed Robin. The spirit, with no better way of communication popping into her head at the moment, decided to just wave and hope to get the message across.

The male looked at Robin with suspicion, but the brunette girl happily waved back with a small smile. Robin also smiled in return, finding it only polite. “Hello. Do you mind telling me what happened to this city and forest?” she continued, hoping for some answers. The girl looked like she was about to reply, but the boy cut her off: “Who are you and why should we tell you? It’s common knowledge, so how can we trust you if you don’t even know?” His tone was demanding and Robin wasn’t really sure how to reply to that.

“Well, I just recently woke up from a nap and from what I remember from before, the city was fine with walls around it and the forest was green and thriving. Now it is not. I just want to know what happened.” The two humans looked at each other. “Let’s just tell him. It can’t hurt,” the girl proposed. Robin coughed to correct her: “I’m actually female.”

“Oh, sorry about that! Your hair is so short, I thought you were a boy!” the human rushed to apologise. Robin gave a nod. “It’s fine. So, can you tell me about what happened?” Robin kept pushing. After a momentary pause, she decided to add: “Please?”

“She used the magic word, Robin! We have to tell her!” the girl kept trying to pursue the boy.  _ “Wait, did she just say Robin?”  _ Robin’s mind halted for a moment. “Your name is Robin?”

“And what of it?” the boy countered.

“My name is Robin too.” A second of silence passed. “You’re lying.,” the human said, disbelief clear on his face.

“No, for real, my name is Robin. What’s yours?” Robin asked the brunette girl, now actually curious.

“Anna!” the girl happily submitted. “And that’s my brother Robin! But friends can call him Rob!”

“Can people with the same name as you also call you Rob? Because I’ve never been called anything other than Robin and for me it would take ages to get used to,” Robin thought out loud. The boy muttered for a little while, but eventually gave up with a quiet growled “Fine.”

“Will you tell me about the city and forest now?”

“Only if you tell us what you are and how you got here without knowing about what happened,” Rob countered yet again. Robin sighed and nodded. “Well, as I said earlier, I slept for a while, but I don’t know how long. What I know for sure is that I went to sleep before whatever happened here took place and I’d like to know when that was. As for what I am, I am a forest spirit of this very same forest that has now been destroyed and it is my duty to keep it alive, so I must know what happened.”

“A big battle. Father always said that it was horrible. This city is on the border of the country and when the trixes attacked, the defense was weak and they managed to cut and burn down most of the forest as well as break the city wall. The survivors all fled and left whatever they were doing while adventurers and soldiers were sent to fight. Nowadays people, mostly adventurers, come here to pay respects from time to time, but other than that not many people come here,” the human Robin informed the spirit.

“That explains a lot. I guess I’ll have to start from scratch then,” Robin replied, not bothering to ask what trixes were.

“What do you mean?”

“Growing the forest. I’ll have to start work on that.” Robin saddened at the thought and opted to look down instead. The cobblestone was worn out and her bare feet stood out in contrast, her toes barely visible from under her cape.

“Can’t you just come with us?” The human girl’s voice was higher than Robin’s or, well, Robin’s, so it stood out when she spoke. She was looking right at the spirit. “Can’t you find a new forest or travel with us?”

“But this is my home.”  _ “And Edhyr is here,”  _ Robin added in thought. Anna nodded in understanding. “But you can always come back?”

“You really want me to come with you, don’t you, little human?” Robin said, giving her a pat on the head. “Why are you two travelling alone in the first place?”

“We want to help the Adventurer’s Guild protect the towns! So we’re going around and helping with killing dangerous beasts and collecting ingredients,” Rob declared with pride. Robin sighed internally at the enthusiasm in his voice.  _ “Kids are so energetic.”  _ “Well, I’ll come with you then. I have nothing better to do other than plant trees, and I much prefer company. One last question, though. How long ago was the battle?”

“Father said that it was eleven years from now.” Robin froze.  _ “Eleven years? That’s a really long time! A really, really long time to sleep! Even for a magical being like me! Gosh, no wonder there’s only a skeleton of Edhyr left!”  _

“Robin?” 

“Eh? Sorry, I got a bit carried away there…” Robin felt sad at the years she had lost, but at the same time - this was a new life! But, still, she had no idea where Jason or the others were and how they were doing or- “Robin!” 

“Right, sorry. So where are we going?”

“We just had a look at the city, so we wanted to check out the dragon of the forest and then get going toward Citnerohs.”

“Great, the forest! My speciality! Lead the way!” Robin followed after the two kids the whole way from the ruined city to the forest border and then past the burnt and cut down trees, to where the last couple dozen living trees stood.

  
  



	6. A journey

“Woah!” Anna's eyes shone bright at the sight of a giant dragon skull. “This is the awesomest thing ever!”

“Most awesome,” Robin corrected lightly, remembering the night she had slept along with Edhyr under the cliffside that night, which was now eleven years and three months ago. Rob seemed to really like the dragon skull as well. “What do you think we pull a few teeth and make them into knives?” he suggested. The forest spirit immediately protested against that idea: “No way! Most of the skeleton is already gone, we don’t have to steal even more parts! Be glad that the skull is even intact!” Rob frowned at the scolding and didn’t bring it up again, while Anna just ran off to examine the giant bone pieces closer and touch them. Robin meanwhile returned to the dent in the ground that she had left when she had gotten up from her napping spot. She sat beside it and just looked at it, not wanting to lay down in it once again. Who knew, maybe she would fall asleep again and another eleven years would pass?

“What’s this?” Robin almost jumped up from her sitting position when Rob’s voice suddenly spoke right into her ear. She wondered how he managed to sneak up on her like that. Rob looked at the indent in the ground with confusion. “Why is this part ripped up?”

“It’s… Where I woke up just a couple hours ago.”

“Huh?” Rob did a double take and looked between Robin and the hole in the ground as if trying to match two puzzle pieces. Anna also walked over. “Hey! A human-shaped hole!” Without any other warning, she threw herself into the dirt, fitting into the hole with space even left over by the legs and head. “Why’re there indents here near the top?”

“That’s probably where my antlers were,” Robin explained curtly. Anna hummed in agreement. “Makes sense.” Rob also leaned down to examine the hole closer, while Robin stepped back, a little further away. She had spent long enough time in that hole, wasted away like summer flowers in the cold.

“Alright, is there anything else interesting here or should we head home, mister forest spirit?” Rob teased. Robin spluttered. “I told you, I’m a girl!”

“Riiight. Why don’t you prove it?”

“You’re real nasty for a kid,” Robin noted as she stood up. She almost wanted to pick Rob up and throw him over her shoulder and to the ground just to see his reaction, but she decided against it. Rob had no idea how close he was to being thrown.

Robin followed the kids out of the forest. She managed to slip a tiny flower she found to Edhyr’s gravestone before they left, but she had no time to say a proper goodbye. Anna was impatient and dragged the two Robins off towards Citnerohs. That was, until Rob reminded her that they had horses. Two horses. The kids only realised the problem when they sat onto the horses and Robin stood next to them with a blank face, not really sure of what to do next and deciding to look at the horses for a little while.

One of the horses was taller than the other. It was a dark brown shade with a lighter mane and looked strong enough to carry several people. Robin had no doubt that Rob and his luggage weren’t even a challenge for it. The other that Anna was sitting on was shorter and lighter, being a milky white with brown patches. Both were plenty tall compared to the kids. Robin went to pet the shorter horse.

“Uhh… How can we do this.” Rob tried to figure out a solution to their problem. “What if I just sit a bit further ahead so Robin can come with me- No, actually, it would be better if you go with Anna. She’s so careless, I’m sure she’ll fall off the horse a couple of times.”

“Rob! That was one time!” Anna protested.

“And it was hilarious,” Rob said with a derpy smirk on his face.

“What if I just walk next to you?” the spirit proposed. Rob’s face lit up. “Great idea! Just make sure to keep up with us!”

“Since your horses also have bags, I doubt they can run that fast. You’ll be walking to save their feet, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I was joking about keeping up with us,” Rob admitted. “Pretty sure we can fit your stuff though!”

“I don’t have anything,” Robin deadpanned.

“Oh. Right. Well, off we go then,” Rob said, awkwardly moving away from Robin and down the road. Robin just walked next to the horse with Anna in turn following right behind the forest spirit.

“So, Robin, tell us about yourself!” she said happily, looking for a conversational topic. Robin just shrugged. “I have green hair.”

“Fine, you don’t wanna talk about yourself. Anything funny happen to you?”

“Well I fell off a cliff once.”

“She said  _ funny _ !” Rob said with horror. Anna didn’t dare ask Robin a question for the following couple hours, instead humming some song that Robin didn’t recognise. It was rather boring to just walk next to the two horses, but Robin had slept for 11 years in total darkness so it wasn’t up to compare. There Robin walked, deep in thought, remembering the day she spent with Edhyr. It had felt like a year, truly.

☯

“I think this is far enough for today,” Rob said, stopping his horse by the roadside next to a small wooden stand. Robin had no idea what it was for. “I’ll put up the shelter.” Rob tied his horse to the stand with a rope. By the way of how Anna also tied her horse to the stand, Robin assumed that it was meant for tying horses to so they don’t wander away.

Rob pulled a big roll of fabric off his horse’s back, almost struggling with its height but not quite, and moved to the small grass field next to the wooden stand, laying down the fabric and unrolling it. Annie also untied a bag from her own horse and started fiddling with some clanky metal things a couple meters from where Rob was. Robin just stood by the horses, petting them. She had no idea what either of the kids was doing and didn’t care to aid in their shenanigans either.

Robin got bored of the horses about twenty minutes later and she returned to the two kids. A small shelter made of some sort of shiny fabric had been set up where Rob had been unrolling said fabric, supported on two wooden sticks to make room for 2, maybe 3 if you pushed it, people to crawl inside. Robin was impressed and headed over to touch the fabric, since it confused her as to what it was made out of. “What is this?” she asked.

“Oh!” Rob replied. “It’s a cool new type of material that father invented! It’s lightweight and easy to pack into a small package, yet it’s waterproof and holds warmth! We always take it with us on journeys since father no longer travels.”

“That sounds cool,” Robin agreed, gently touching the fabric with her fingertips. “What are you doing?” she asked just seconds later, looking at the small fire of sticks and leaves that Anna had built. It was smoking quite a bit. Robin had to step closer to notice the small shining metal bowl in the middle, filled with some sort of soup. 

“I’m making dinner!” Anna declared happily. Robin didn’t know kids Anna’s age could make food like that but she just accepted it. A lot could change in eleven years and these kids looked very independent anyway. Robin had no doubt they were just fine out in the wild on their own.

Anna offered Robin a cup of soup just ten minutes later, Robin had counted. With nothing better to do, Robin had indeed counted seconds as she stared at the fire for ten minutes. She was pretty sure Rob was eyeing her with concern, but she didn’t care. Robin just sipped on her soup. It tasted pretty bland, but Robin really couldn’t blame Anna. Add the fact that she was a forest spirit and didn’t actually need to eat- Hold on, she hadn’t eaten in eleven years. Yeah, actually Robin was glad to have some food. “Thanks for the food.”

“Of course! We can’t let you starve! We do only have rations meant for two people though so we’ll have to hunt or something,” Anna muttered.

“It’s fine, I don’t actually need to eat that often. I can live on one meal every three months,” Robin said, brushing Anna’s worries off.

“That’s… Horrifying but great,” Rob said. Robin wasn’t sure what expression he was wearing since his hood was now pulled up and covering his face from Robin’s view but it sounded like it wasn’t fully positive in any case. Robin munched on some solid pieces in the soup that she assumed were potatoes or other vegetables and set her cup down next to the fire. She halted a bit when she saw both Anna and the other Robin using spoons to eat their soup.  _ “...Sora. I look like an idiot now.” _ It was already getting dark and Robin decided to ask about sleeping accommodations since she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to sleep in the fabric shelter. 

“Am I supposed to sleep with you in the shelter or…?” she asked, stretching out the end of the sentence. Rob was first to answer: “That’s what we planned, yeah, since it’s best to keep warm, but you sound like you don’t want to. Nobody is forcing you.”

“I’m used to sleeping under the stars. Thanks.” Robin threw herself on the ground right then and there, wrapping herself up in her coat for comfort. The dragon scales in the inner pocket poked at her stomach uncomfortably with their sharp edges, but Robin only took it as a reminder of her past life eleven years ago. She drifted off to a light sleep while thinking about flying with Edhyr all those years ago, not bothered by the chilly wind howling above.

Robin woke up when it started getting lighter at sunrise. She unrolled from her position on the ground with a yawn and a stretch to start off the morning. A quick peek into the fabric shelter told her that the kids were still sleeping, both bundled in their respective blankets and covered up in fluffy fur. Robin, bored and with nothing better to do, decided to find something to eat for both the horses and the humans. To her delight, she found a cluster of blueberry bushes in the shade of a bush not far from their shelter. Robin dashed back to the camp to grab a cup and went to pick some berries. When done picking berries, Robin headed back to camp. The amount she had found wasn’t a lot by any means, but she divided them in two cups and offered the berries to the two horses. The shorter horse seemed to like them more than the dark and tall one and Robin made a mental note to get the horses more treats later in time.

Since it had been what Robin figured to be almost an hour from sunrise, she decided to wake up the humans. With a poke at what she assumed was Anna’s arm, she whispered: “Wake up now. The Sun is up.” The only reply she got was an unintelligible mumble. Robin frowned. Were all humans this hard to wake up? It wasn’t just Mona then. Robin decided to skip all further steps and went all out. She took a hold of the blanket and pulled hard. She didn’t know whose blanket she had tugged on, but protest started up quickly enough. “Hey! Quit it! It’s cold! Give me back my blanket!” Rob’s voice spoke out in grumbles. He was still in warm clothes, though he had changed for ones that looked more comfortable. Fluffy and soft sleeping clothes. Robin wanted ones like those, but knew she didn’t need them. They just looked very comfortable. She let go of the blanket. “Wake up your friend. The Sun is up.”

“So? And she’s my sister.”

“The Sun is up. That means we start moving now, does it not?”

“No! We need sleep, you know. You might be a spirit without needing to eat or sleep - Sora, you slept for eleven years so you should have no need to sleep for the next twenty at the very least! - but humans need sleep. So leave us alone for now.”

“What will I do?”

“Make some food. The packets are in that bag,” Rob replied, lazily pointing to a bag next to him as he wrapped his blanket around himself again. “Have a go at cooking.” Robin grabbed the bag and headed over to the place where they had set up a campfire. She had no idea what Rob had meant with ‘packets’ but she at least wanted to try and help out as thanks for last night’s meal. Robin opened the bag and pulled out the already familiar metal bowl, some sort of flask - wait, no, there were three of those -, and another bag inside the bigger bag that had some folded parchment pieces inside. Robin was pretty sure the parchment pieces had more pieces inside them, whatever they were. She unrolled one of curiosity. A handful of herbs and spices was inside the parchment roll, packaged to take up as little space as possible. Robin had no idea what to do with it so she rolled it up again and put it back in the bag.

She spent a little while looking through the bag and eventually found something that she thought might be the packages Rob had been talking about. Bags made out of parchment, as the herb rolls had been, but these were bigger and Robin could feel bigger chunks inside as well. She opened one of these bags and spent a good couple of minutes trying to figure out what to do with the contents.

What was Robin supposed to do with dried out potato, cabbage and carrot pieces? A salad? Robin didn’t know, but she had nobody to ask for guidance either since the kids were asleep. She couldn’t try to imitate the soup she had eaten last night since she didn’t have a water source available, but she could try to make a salad like food out of them. Better yet: she could try to find additional ingredients from the wild! Would berries work together with carrots? Probably not. Robin got to work at making some sort of breakfast.

☯

“Good morning!” Anna said, climbing out of the fabric shelter. Robin waved at her from her place by the campfire spot. “Hey, Robin! What are you doing?” Anna asked, walking closer to Robin and squatting down next to her. “I tried to make a salad.”

“Salad? What for?”

“Rob told me to make food when I told him to get up. He gave me your bag and went back to sleep, so I took some of the herbs in there as well as the vegetable pieces and added some greens that I found nearby to make a salad.”

“Woah! They’re not poisonous, are they?”

“If they were, the humans living in the city next to my forest wouldn't have been gathering them like crazy. I gave a little bit to the horses as well, and some berries that I found too. I’ve been meaning to ask, do the horses have names?”

“Yes, yes they do! My horse, the smaller one, is named Poppy. Rob’s horse is called Thunderbolt.”

“Got it. Poppy and Thunderbolt have been fed!” Robin reported to Anna, who giggled at the spirit’s mock bow. “Take some salad then, I’ll wake up Rob. He has no excuse anymore since you’re wide awake already,” Robin said and walked right over to wake up Rob for the second time today. “Oh, mighty adventurer! Get up, we must continue on our journey!” she said in a joking tone. Robin yet again pulled off Rob’s blanket, but this time walked away with it back to where Anna was now sitting and eating her salad, leaving the blond boy without his blanket in the shelter. Rob was forced to go after his blanket and thus leave the shelter. “I’m up, you crazy elf,” he muttered grumpily. Robin gasped in mock offense. “I am not an elf! I am a high-esteemed forest spirit!”

“Sure, whatever, tell that to your dead forest. Now give me something to eat, will ya?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do so I made salad,” Robin explained quickly, handing a cupful of salad to the human. Rob took it and started eating almost immediately, not caring for the fork Anna was offering to him. The brunette just looked at the spirit and shrugged. “Boys.” Robin wasn’t sure what she meant, but she could see similarities in human Robin’s and Jason’s behaviour and was inclined to agree. Human males were something else.

☯

Robin had heard all about Citnerohs from Anna’s and Rob’s stories of it, but she had never seen it with her own eye. That’s why she was so surprised to see many farms and fields on the way before they even made it to the residential area where many smaller buildings were huddled together closely. The group went through some sort of village center as well. It had a big well and a clock attached to it, unlike what Robin had ever seen before. Rob and Anna didn’t pay much attention to it, so she decided not to make a big deal out of it either and walked past it. She did look at it closer, but didn’t stop walking to do so and just accepted what she got.

After the residential area came the wall protecting the heart of the city. Robin was surprised to see that other cities also had walls but didn’t mention it. Instead she had a look at the wall as they walked closer to it. The stones looked smoother and some were broken lower down. Moss was growing on the stone in smaller patches. Robin figured the wall must just be older than the one of the city next to her forest. The closer they got to the wall, the more insecure Robin started feeling. The city had no way to get in or out of the walls other than the gate and once she went in, she had no idea how the humans would react to her presence with the antlers and green hair and all. Robin was scared of negative reactions. So she decided to pull the hood of her coat over her head. It was still visible that the hood wasn’t resting on anyone’s head, clearly, since the pointy tips of Robin’s antlers made it look janky and not smooth like it usually would resting on a head, but it was better than parading around with her antlers in full view. She didn’t know how many non-humans like caninians or felinians went there and how the general public reacted to them. Some humans didn’t care, but some didn’t like half-breeds that had both human and animalistic traits. Some even got violent and threatened with violence sometimes, Robin had seen it happen in the city by her wall.

She kept close to Rob’s horse and hoped the guards would let them pass without fuss. Fortunately, there were actually quite a lot of people by the gate. The only hindrance was when Rob and Anna had to stop to leave Poppy and Thunderbolt since they weren’t allowed inside the walls for visitors or residents. Only merchants. Robin was forced to stand next to the two and her antlers gave her an obvious boost in height so she did her best to squat a little under her coat and even out the height so she would look Rob’s age.

The guards let them pass without any other complaints. They were in. Robin had no idea where they were headed, but Rob seemed to have a good idea of where they were going, so she just followed. They got away from the gate pretty quick and headed down a bigger street. Rob kept to the right side of the street and eventually turned to enter a weaponry. Robin followed after and Anna closed the door behind the three.

“What are we doing here?” Robin asked, clueless. Rob stared at the spirit. “You’re kidding? To get new and awesome weapons, of course! I haven’t been here in ages and considering how close we live to it, it’s a crime in my eyes.”

“Whatever you say.” Robin was unsure of what to say and just stood in the middle of the room, looking at the various weapons on the stands and walls from afar. There were spears, longswords, short swords, bows, daggers, hammers, axes, maces - you name it, it was there. Robin was impressed with the options. Rob headed right over to the wall of longswords and Anna moved to look at the daggers. It looks like both already had preferences set. Robin, not having any money whatsoever to purchase anything, decided not to touch anything and wait for the two humans to make their decision before they moved on to wherever they were going next.

“Robin? Aren’t you going to get anything?” Anna asked dreamily.

“Don’t have any money,” she reminded her. Anna shrugged. “We do. Father gave us plenty.”

“I can’t let you buy-”

“Come here, get yourself a nice dagger. I think you might like this one,” Anna said with a smile, pointing at a dagger made of a combination of metal and wood. Robin did like it, but didn’t want to admit it. “I don’t need a weapon.”

“Well, right. You’re not an adventurer. But you should still have something to defend yourself with.”

“Actually-” Robin was about to argue that she was in fact an adventurer, but wasn’t sure if her hasty and accidental registration still counted for anything and kept quiet instead. “Nevermind. I don’t need a weapon.” Robin turned away from the wall of daggers and stared out the door instead.

Robin was surprised when Anna gave her a pat on the back a few minutes later and handed her the dagger she had pointed at earlier. “I don’t-”

“We already paid for it. Just take it and keep it for our sake,” Anna said and walked out the door, leaving Robin to wonder how they paid if nobody else had been in the store with them. Rob tapped her on the head, signalling for Robin to follow Anna outside. Robin did. “Where to next?”

“The armory!” Anna cheered and started walking down the street. “Fine,” Robin grumbled. “But none for me. I’m resistant enough as it is.”

“Fine. No armor. But at least keep the dagger,” Rob agreed. Robin nodded. She would treasure this dagger. “Thank you.” Robin was quiet, but Rob and Anna heard her anyway. They didn’t comment.

“Here we are! The armory!” Rob said, gesturing at the nearby blacksmith workshop. It was a separate stone building with two big men, probably the blacksmiths, going around. Both seemed to be working on something. One of them was hitting a glowing hot sword-to-be with a hammer, making a loud  _ clank _ noise every time the hammer hit. The second was heating up some other pieces of metal, it was yet unclear what they would be made into. Robin flinched at the loud noise, dragging her hood a little lower on her face. A headache was already forming.

The building itself was fully stone except for the front counter stopping people in the street from just walking inside. A young man was standing behind the counter, clearly there for the sales and not the work of smithing. Robin had no idea how humans could mold metal so easily, but she didn’t bother to find out either. This didn’t concern her.

“Hello!” Rob greets the clerk. “We’re here for some armour that we ordered a couple months ago.”

“Name?” the man behind the counter asked, pulling a piece of parchment out from under the counter.

“Robin and Anna Mellow.”

“I have you right here. Two sets, medium small size aluminium shoulder, wrist, knee, and shin guards?”

“That’s the order, yes,” Rob confirmed. The cashier gave a nod and walked off into the building. He came back a minute later with a small box. “Here you go. It says you have an unpaid part of the payment-”

“Got it right here.” Rob set a small leather bag down on the counter. The young man took a moment to pour it out on the desk and count the coins. Robin wished he would hurry up. Her head hurt from the clanking noise. Finally, after having finished reading the coins, the clerk let them off with the small box.

Rob and Anna decided it was a good time for a lunch break and headed to a small cafe nearby. Robin was delighted to see that they sell apple pies and really wanted one in the name of the past. But Robin didn’t want to make Rob or Anna spend any more money on her. So she kept quiet and just looked at the pie on the countertop from afar.

Robin was surprised when Anna came back from the counter with the pie in her hand. “I saw you looking at it,” she said with a smile.  _ “I’m surprised a lot lately,”  _ Robin thought to herself as she lifted a piece of pie onto her plate with a fork. She wasn’t used to using cutlery, but she had gotten a week of practice when she travelled with Mona, Jason, Nyx and Firo. Also the people that she was with when she fell in love with apple pie. Robin’s heart ached as she tasted the sweet pie. It was pretty good, but not as good as she remembered Madame Edith’s pies to be.

“Do you like the pie, Robin?” Rob asked. Robin just nodded and took another bite.  _ “It’s… good.”  _ She was pretty sad now, remembering that she had no idea where any of her adventurer friends were at the moment. She was all alone now. Robin looked up when she saw another slice of pie come onto her plate. Anna had chopped her piece in two and had given a part of it to Robin. She smiled at the spirit. Robin smiled, eyes watering.  _ “I’m not alone. I have these two with me. For now.”  _ “Thank you.”

☯

“Where to now?” Robin asked Rob, who was untying Thunderbolt at the moment. The horse was stretching his neck to reach the carrot Anna was holding out to him. “Well, now that we have our gear, I was thinking we would stop by our house before moving on to the capital.”

“What’s the capital?” Robin asked, confused by the word. Rob snorted. “It’s the biggest and most important city in the country!”

“Alright. Another city. Is it also inside walls?”

“It has a wall all around it and it’s way stronger than the ones at Citnerohs or Neoma.”

“Neoma? Where’s that.”

“It’s the city where we met you,” Rob explained shortly. Robin nodded in understanding. “Neoma…” she repeated, doing her best to remember the name. Rob and Anna climbed on their respective horses and started leading them away from the city. Robin followed suit. When far enough away from the city, Robin felt safe to pull the hood off her head and let the wind ruffle her hair as she ran alongside the two horses.

This time they didn’t have to ride the horses for days. Instead, they arrived at Rob’s and Anna’s house in just a couple of hours of walking. They had a nice big garden filled with all sorts of flowers and other plants. Robin thought she saw a small vegetable field next to the house since the area there had less grass and was more pure dirt. The house was made of wood with the foundation being of stone. It had two stores and the windows were nice and wide with several windowsills having colourful flower pots on them. Robin thought it looked cozy. A small balcony adorned the front of the house with the ground floor being a bit lifted from the ground and a set of wooden stairs leading up to the balcony. A wooden shack stood to the left of the house. Robin could hear chickens somewhere and saw what could have been a coop next to the shack.

Anna was first to slide off her horse. She went to pull a rope from her bag. Rob also jumped off his horse, pulling Thunderbolt towards the hut. The horses seemed happy to finally be home and looked to be gleefully prancing towards the shack. Anna followed Rob to the shack. When Rob opened the door and led the horses in, Robin saw hay on the ground and a big bucket of water in the corner of the room. It looked like a stable usually would.

The kids didn’t take long to remove all the bags from the horses’ backs as well as the saddles. Anna had 2 bags while Rob had 3, making 5 bags for the two of them in total. When done, Rob led Robin to the house’s entrance - a wooden door with glass decorations and a fancy metal doorknob. A brown doormat was laying in front of the entrance. It was kind of muddy now that Robin looked closer, but she didn’t mind. Everything was muddy in the forest after a good rain, after all. She was used to it. That got Robin thinking of when it had last rained. She missed dancing in the rain, she hadn’t the last time she remembered it raining. When Edhyr had just died. She really liked the feeling of droplets on her skin. It was gentle at times yet harsh when need be. A perfect show of balance from nature.

The door clicking pulled Robin out of her fantasies. Just seconds later, a familiar face stared at her from the doorway. Robin’s voice got stuck in her throat. The dark-haired middle-aged man in the doorway locked eyes with Robin and also stood there for a couple of seconds. Anna, not seeing the recognition in either of the two’s eyes, just gave the man a hug. “We’re back dad!” she declared happily. The man seemed to recover from his shock as well, gesturing with her hand for everyone to come inside. Rob and Anna did so, kicking off their shoes next to the door and putting their coats onto the hanger. Robin hesitated, but followed them inside when the man stepped aside and away from the door. She decided not to take her coat off, preferring to have her possessions near her at all times. The dragon scales in her inner pocket were invaluable to her, after all. The kids went to put their bags away in their room upstairs just minutes later, leaving Robin alone with the owner of the house. 


	7. An old friend

“You’ve changed. Just barely, but you look a couple years older now,” the man said, not looking at Robin but clearly addressing her. Robin nodded. “You’ve changed plenty, haven’t you… Jason?”

“Robin.” Jason smiled and lifted a hand for a handshake. Robin took it happily. “I was scared I’d never find you again,” she said. Jason nodded in agreement. “As was I. We left for the mission, but when we returned, we just couldn’t find you anywhere. We searched through the entire forest but you were nowhere to be found. A couple months later, Firo and Nyx backed out of the search and gave up. Mona and I kept looking in hopes to find you again, but to no avail. So, Robin, where have you been all these years?” Jason walked through the doorway and away from the entrance, to what seemed to be the living room.

There were four armchairs surrounding the fireplace, all a soft tone of blue. The fireplace itself was lit and cracking gently every now and then. A small stand with chopped up firewood stood to the right of the fireplace. A smaller counter stood next to one of the chairs and a bigger dining table a bit further away near the wall with 6 chairs surrounding it. A bowl of an odd pear-ish colour of apples was sitting on the table. The walls were covered with wooden panels and the wall next to the dining table even had tapestry, though it wasn’t very fancy; just a plain beige tone with small blue and red flowers repeating in a pattern - Robin could see that a couple were a little smudged. A big bookshelf stood tall next to the entrance to the room, filled with colourful titles of all sorts.

Jason pulled a piece of wood and threw it into the fire, then sat down in the closest chair, gesturing for Robin to also take a seat. “We should catch up,” he suggested. Robin sat down and looked Jason in the eye. “You’ve changed. You used to be so irresponsible.”

“And you’re not wearing a skirt anymore. How are people supposed to know you’re not-”

“Oh, come off it!” Robin scoffed. A second later, she added a quiet mutter: “Though Anna did mistake me for a boy-”

“What was that?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all.” Robin decided to change the topic instead: “So you have kids now?”

“I decided to take them in when they were little. They’ve all grown up now and go on adventures themselves, but it’s their home and they always come back in the end, so I’m not worried.”

“Take them in? So you found them somewhere.”

“Indeed. They were abandoned by the side of the road, I’m afraid. No idea why or who their parents were but I decided to help them out. Now look at me, I’m like a granny with all my gardening and cooking!” Jason said, throwing his hands in the air to emphasize his point. “I don’t go on adventures anymore, these two do it for me nowadays.” Robin just nodded along.

“Well, where have you been?” Jason asked, waiting for an answer from Robin. She just sighed. “Remember that one time when I slept for two months?”

“Yeah, I do. That was so weird, who can sleep for two months straight and not wake up?”

“Well… It happened again.”

“No way,” Jason gaped for a second, then started laughing hysterically. “What a sleeper you are! How long was it this time? Two months again?”

“From what I know it’s been eleven years,” Robin deadpanned. Jason resumed his laughing. “All this time? You are something else entirely, aren’t you Robin?”

“Speaking of,” Robin interrupted. “I couldn’t help but notice that your son is also named Robin.” Jason’s eye twitched. “Right. About that-”

“You’re still continuing the joke aren’t you? First you jab at the skirt and now you name your son after a female forest spirit. Great job.” Jason smiled through a grimace. “Look, a lot happened and I thought you dead for a while, as did the rest of the team. It was a tribute-”

“But Anna?”

“Mona got to name Anna,” Jason grimaced again. Robin stared in disbelief. “What could I do! She absolutely adores all sorts of little girls! That’s why she basically adopted you on our trip as well,” Jason defended himself. “If I wouldn’t have let her near Anna, she would’ve rioted for sure and I couldn’t just keep the fact that I have two kids now from her either!”

“That… Actually makes a lot of sense,” Robin mumbled. “Alright, I’ll take it.”

“Thanks.” A brief moment of silence, both adventurers staring into the fire as it crackled on. Jason’s curiosity seemed to get the best of him and he asked another question: “So how did you stumble upon the kids?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Woke up to a dragon skull, a mostly dead forest and a ruined city. They were just there for a trip to have a look at it. And they agreed to let me come with since I am poor like a salmon and had nothing better to do anyway.”

“Poor like a salmon? Where did you get that comparison from?”

“Don’t judge me. I had an eleven year break from socialisation, I’m rusty,” Robin said with a childish pout, sending Jason into another fit of laughter. “Alright, alright! The kids should be done any minute now. Have you had dinner yet?”

“No, we ate lunch in another city but haven’t eaten since then.”

“Great. I’ll get cooking then. Don’t forget to feed the horses either.” Jason stood up from his chair and walked off in what Robin assumed was the kitchen’s direction. Robin didn’t know if she should follow or stay, and made a split second decision to stay in the comfy chair and wait for Anna and Robin. It wasn’t long until the two came downstairs again. “We’re done unpacking!” Anna declared. They joined Robin by the fire, enjoying the warmth of it.    
  
“Anna, Rob! Can you come help me out here?”

“‘course dad!” Rob replied, already rushing to Jason’s aid. Robin decided to also help out and headed to the kitchen with the kids. Jason was standing by the table, peeling potatoes. Rob went and got himself a knife as well to help out. Anna was also given a knife and some carrots to chop up. Robin was left with chopping up the potatoes as the boys peeled them. Robin had never cut anything into small pieces like this before, but she had fun figuring it out.

☯

Robin had never gotten used to sleeping indoors. She could sleep, but it was always light sleep. The tiniest noise could wake her up. Coupled with the fact that she had no real exhaustion - she had more than enough energy from that 11-year nap - Robin couldn’t sleep. Jason had graciously offered up the guest’s room for Robin to use since the kids had their own bedroom and Jason had his own. The odd family didn’t own a couch, instead they had four seats in the living room which usually worked quite well. But Jason thought sleeping in chairs would be uncomfortable and so here Robin lay, in the room next to Jason’s and in the dark, wide awake. Usually she would get at least a few hours of sleep to gain back the energy spent on walking during the day, but now that she was sleeping indoors and in a bed, Robin just couldn’t manage to fall asleep. She wasn’t particularly tired either, so it wasn’t a loss, but she was mainly just bored now.

Robin thought long and hard if it was a good idea to wander around a house that didn’t belong to her at night. Well, she didn’t own any house, but the point stood. The boredom seemed to triple while she sat on the bed staring at the wall, so she decided to just get up and do something. Robin left the room as quietly as she could as to not wake any of the others. Thankfully, her door didn’t squeak. Jason probably oiled them well or something. Robin wasn’t that confident in her knowledge of how doors worked.

She snuck down the stairs, managing to only step on two squeaking steps on her way down, and made a spontaneous decision to cook up some breakfast for Jason, Anna, and human Robin. Robin really couldn’t stop labelling Rob “human Robin” mentally. She had to work on that some other time. The stairs ended up right next to the front door and Robin turned right from there, towards the kitchen. The living room was to the left of the stairs.

The kitchen was pretty small with a stone oven by the wall, also effectively warming up this side of the house as a fireplace would. A smaller stone stand was standing between the oven and the wall to it’s left and a bigger wooden table to the right of it. Robin could barely make out burn marks on the table as she stepped closer. Had somebody dropped something hot here? A workspace also sat by the door with two buckets of water underneath it. A doorway led to what Robin assumed was the dining room from in between the two wooden tables. A cabinet stood on the other side of the doorway next to the wall. Robin could see plates and bowls through the glass doors.  _ “The drawers probably have cutlery,”  _ she figured.

Having inspected the whole kitchen and not finding anything new from what she had seen while cutting up potatoes, Robin ran into a problem.  _ “How am I supposed to make food without ingredients?”  _ She was sure a pantry was there somewhere and usually it would be connected to the kitchen, but the two doorways led to the dining room and front hallway. Robin couldn’t find a pantry or storage room anywhere and all the food was certainly in the pantry. She decided to think of something else to do in the meantime, though it had to be something that made close to no noise since the three humans were still asleep and needed rest, unlike Robin.  _ “Humans are so complicated,”  _ Robin thought. She headed to the living room instead and took a seat in one of the chairs. It was eerily silent since the fire was no longer crackling in the fireplace. Robin could see stars from the two windows in the walls. That gave her an idea and without further thought, she headed right back to the hallway she had just come from a moment earlier. Robin did her best to keep the front door clicking closed as silent as possible. When finally outside, she took a deep breath of fresh air. She could hear crickets in the distance as if echoing at each other.

Robin headed over to the stables where Poppy and Thunderbolt were sleeping. She could see a bucket filled with carrots outside the gate keeping the horses in the building, probably meant as breakfast for the two. The horses were just standing around, neither acknowledging Robin’s presence. Robin looked at them for a couple of minutes, wondering why Jason hadn’t gotten horses when they were headed to find the dragon all those years ago. He probably had a good reason, Robin just didn’t know what it was. Or maybe Jason just didn’t think of it. A quick glance to the side of the house revealed what was indeed a chicken coop. It was quiet now, the birds being asleep. Robin wondered how many Jason had in total, since she couldn’t see inside.

Robin decided to take time to look over the garden that Jason must have put several days worth of hours into creating. The grass was a lust green tone still, seemingly not minding the low temperatures at all. A dirt path led up to the front door from the small gate. The whole thing was surrounded by a wooden fence. First stop was the vegetable garden. It had caught Robin’s eye when she had first arrived so she went to check it out. It was still dark outside, but Robin could make out just about where the plants were growing and managed not to step on them. She could recognize what looked like carrot and potato plant leaves, but the rest she didn’t recognize. A small area on the vegetable patch was empty with some dead vine-like plants on the ground - probably already harvested for this year. Robin moved on from the vegetable garden and walked by the front of the house to the other side where flowerbeds were in neat circles and other shapes. Some of them were empty of flowers and just plain dirt, but a couple had plants suited for colder weather. Robin didn’t recognise them but they seemed familiar.

With a quick tour around and a look at the hedge - which was way taller than Robin, she was impressed - Robin decided to stargaze for a little while. She lied down on the grass with her hands under her head and looked up. There were thin clouds covering up some of the night sky, but she could still see quite a bit. She found a couple patterns that were already familiar to her from back when she used to stargaze in her forest, but also some new ones. One of her favourites was the fox. It was an elegant spiral consisting of 8 stars in total.

_ “I wonder how Fluff- Oh… The forest… How long do foxes live?”  _ Robin’s thought wandered away from the stars in the sky and instead to her favourite fox. It was a very small likelihood that Fluff was still living freely after having survived the forest being destroyed, if he was still alive. After eleven years passing, Robin wasn’t so sure anymore. She sadly remembered all the times Fluff came to cuddle with her in her favourite tree.  _ “He was so sweet. I hope he’s happy, wherever he is.”  _ Robin closed her eyes, thinking back at the forest.  _ “I miss the flow of the river. I miss the sound of birds chirping in early mornings. I miss my hollow tree. I miss Fluff. I miss the daily patrols. I miss the small cliff. I miss the old oak tree. I miss it all.”  _ With sadness now chewing on her heart, Robin got up from the ground and went back inside. She didn’t bother going all the way upstairs again, instead going to light the fire in the fireplace.

Robin had no idea how the magic fire sticks called matches worked. Instead, she just used actual fire magic to light the fire. It took a couple of seconds to get the wood aflame but it didn’t take long for it to start crackling comfortably after that. Robin sat down in the closest chair and just stared into the fire, watching how it flickered and moved and how the colour tones changed darker from the bottom to the tip of the flame. It was oddly relaxing, Robin had to admit. It wasn’t often she had time to just stare at a fire since she never had need to make one in the first place and when someone else did, it was usually for cooking food - which, again, Robin didn’t have to do.

Robin lost track of time as she stared and when she finally looked up from the fireplace and out the window to gaze at the stars instead, the stars were already gone. The Sun was rising and the white dots in the sky were gone, replaced with a blue sky and a couple of clouds. She was surprised, but not overly. It was pretty obvious that Robin had been sitting there in one position for a couple of hours at the very least. With a sigh, she got up from the chair and stretched her legs lightly with a couple of small squats. She had no idea if Jason or either of the kids were awake yet so she decided to go back outside and feed Thunderbolt and Poppy while she had the time. She should at least assist somehow?

The horses were indeed awake, just walking around the stable when Robin came by. The spirit grabbed the bucket of carrots and pulled one out, stretching her hand towards Panny. The horse happily swiped the carrot out of Robin’s fingers and Robin pulled another for Thunderbolt. So she continued until the bucket was empty of carrots with only a couple pieces that had broken off at the bottom. Robin placed the empty bucket back where she had taken it from and went back inside the house. She was caught off guard with bustling coming from the kitchen. It seemed like somebody was up and awake and already making food. Robin curiously headed to the kitchen.

It was Jason, meddling around with some sort of ceramic dish and potatoes.  _ “Where did he get the potatoes from?”  _ Robin joined him in the kitchen. “Where’s the pantry?” she asked, straight to the point. Jason, not having noticed the spirit enter the room, yelped and whipped around with a knife pointed at Robin. He lowered it just a second later. “Oh, just you. I thought somebody broke in or something,” he sighed. “What did you say?”

“Where’s the pantry,” Robin repeated. “I couldn’t find it.”

“Couldn’t-? Oh, how could I have forgotten. Of course forest spirits don’t sleep well indoors. I’m sorry Robin, I truly forgot,” Jason apologized with a hasty bow. Robin just nodded. “It’s fine.”

“The pantry, well, I understand that you couldn’t find it-” Jason walked out of the kitchen and back to the hallway. He didn’t go to the living room or up the stairs, instead walking to the side of the stairway. Robin hadn’t bothered since it was a dead end and she assumed it was meant to be a spot for storage that Jason had intentionally kept clean of clutter. She was proven wrong when Jason took a hold of the wall that she had assumed was keeping the stairs steady and pulled, revealing a door that perfectly blended into the wall.

“Huh. Never would have guessed,” Robin muttered. Jason pulled the door all the way open and gestured for the spirit to peek inside. Robin did so. The room was relatively small at first with a couple shelves littering the wood-covered walls and wooden crates laying here and there on the ground. But upon further inspection Robin could see that the room stretched further, in the opposite direction from the front door. Jason pulled a candle from somewhere, Robin really hadn’t noticed, where, and lit it on fire, providing light. He offered the candle and it’s stand to Robin, who took it with a grateful nod. She stepped into the secret room under the stairs and wandered further.

It turned out the room was quite big, reaching underneath Jason’s room upstairs and away from the stairs entirely - that was just the entrance, it seemed. Now that Robin could see better, she noticed shelves and cupboards by the walls that had many glass jars on them. She stepped closer. There were labels on the jars, but Robin didn’t know what they said. She couldn’t read, after all. “Hey, Jason? What are these?” The human walked over and had a look at the jars. “Apple and strawberry jam! Anna’s favourite,” he declared.

“You made all this?”

“Yep! We have a couple apple trees behind the house and it gives more than enough fruit to make jam and even sell some. Rob prefers butter, I have to get that at the market, but other than that we mostly live off of our own garden.”

“No meat then?” Robin queried, now interested.

“Only on special occasions when I purchase some from the market. Even then, not in big amounts.”

“Understandable. How far is the market?”

“About twenty minutes on horse, twenty more back. I go with the neighbour’s carriage when Anna and Robin take the horses out on adventures. I let them name them and everything.”

“Poppy and Thunderbolt?”

“Indeed. You can immediately tell who named which, can’t you?” Jason asked with a chuckle, heading back to the hallway. Robin followed suit. “True.”

The two walked back to the kitchen. Jason immediately returned to cutting the potatoes to thin slices. Robin snuck closer to see what he was doing. “What are you making?”

“A roast potato dish. I have no reason to make such a large quantity on my own but now that the kids are back and you also joined…” Jason trailed off and did a spinning gesture with the knife he was holding. “Yeah, I have more than enough reason now.” Robin just nodded yet again. “Can I assist somehow?”

“Oh, you can start placing the potatoes in that dish over there! Is the fire still going? We need to heat up the oven too-” Jason stopped cutting the potatoes and went to light the oven instead. Robin just took the potato slices that he had already cut and started placing them into the ceramic dish. It was a rectangle with round edges and a calming shade of light brown. Robin liked it.

When done with the potatoes, having placed all available slices into the bottom of the dish, Robin turned to look at Jason. The ex-adventurer was still struggling with the fire. “Is the wood damp? I don’t understand-” he muttered, desperately trying to light the fire that, for some reason, just wouldn’t start. Robin walked over. “Need help?”

“If you can offer some,” Jason admitted begrudgingly. Robin lifted a hand and shot a small fireball at the log pieces in the oven. Jason jumped back. “Whoa! Warn me before you set my house on fire!” he yelled.

“It worked,” Robin countered, pointing at the small flame in the stone oven. Jason stared for a few seconds and went back to slicing up potatoes with a sigh. “You sure know how to make life interesting.” Robin shrugged and continued placing potato slices into the dish.

When all the potatoes that Jason had in the kitchen were sliced up and placed into the dish, Jason pulled out a basket of eggs and some sort of spices. Robin watched him pour the orange powder on the potatoes and then start cracking eggs and pouring them onto the dish. With nothing better to do, Robin kept an eye on the fire in the oven. Jason soon came with some thick gloves holding the dish to push it into the fire and let it cook. “Thanks for the help,” he said to Robin with a small smile. Robin smiled back. “It was a pleasure to take part in human cooking rituals.” Jason snorted. “Come on, you and I both know that you don’t talk like that!” he said, laughing. Robin just smiled even wider.

The two headed to the living room while they waited for the potato dish to cook. The fire Robin had lit was still going, albeit now smaller than it had been before. Jason added a couple of logs and sat down in a chair. Robin sat in the one opposite to him. “How are Mona, Firo, Nyx?” she asked him, wanting to know how her friends had been doing. Oh!” Jason responded. “Mona is still going as an adventurer, as is Nyx. They occasionally party up for bigger threats and generally protect the areas near the capital. You’ll be headed over there next so you might have a chance to meet them on the way.”

“And Firo?”

“He has been real silent in the last few months. He’s always been a bookworm but it’s never been this bad. The last time we went to see him he was back at the library and wouldn’t agree to any plans that we made. He kept researching something and when we asked what, he said it was classified. I think someone from higher up might have hired him, but he’s been overworking and it’s plain to see.” Jason sounded worried as he spoke. Robin agreed. She was also worried for one of her only friends.  _ “On the topic of friends-”  _ “Hey, Jason? Do you have any books that might mention foxes?”

“Like, storybooks? Or nature guides and such?” he responded. Jason seemed down from discussing Firo, but other than that he was ready to assist.

“Nature guides,” Robin clarified. “How long do they generally live? I never did learn back in my forest. I didn’t follow animals around for years.” Jason stood up from his chair and walked over to the bookshelf. “Why the sudden interest?” he asked, curious. Robin turned to look at the floor near her bare feet. “I used to have a friend, in the forest, back before I met you.”

“Oh, I see.” The next couple of minutes passed in silence, the only sound in the room being the fire crackling steadily. Jason returned with a single book that had a beautiful forest green cover. “Creatures of the forest. See if you find anything on foxes.” He set the book down in Robin’s lap and walked off. Robin could hear footsteps going up the stairs. She pulled the book open, only to be met with a wall of text that she couldn’t read.  _ “...Sora.”  _ Robin closed the book and put it on the floor next to the chair.  _ “I should really learn how to read sometime…” _

__ It only took a few minutes of disappointed staring for Robin to come back to the real world when she heard a series of thumps - someone running down the stairs. Robin twisted in her chair, trying to see who had come downstairs. She could barely see a tuft of blond hair in the hallway before it disappeared into the kitchen.  _ “Ah. Rob is up.”  _ Robin stood up from her chair and followed the human to the kitchen, taking the book with her from the floor.

Rob was sitting in front of the oven and trying to peek into it. Robin put the book on the table next to it. “Morning, Robin,” she greeted him.

“Morning, Robin!” the human returned enthusiastically. “What are you doing up so early? With a soft bed under your back it should be no biggie to sleep in, especially compared to the ground where you slept before!”

“The Sun rose an hour ago.”

“Oh, so you always wake with the Sun? Figures. That’s why you were up early on the travels too? I thought the ground was just uncomfortable or you got cold or something.”

“No, it was the Sun. I told you the first time when I tried to wake you, did I not?” Robin replied, thinking of the first morning when she made salad for the two humans. Rob shrugged. “Probably, but I don’t remember. Anyway, we’re having the roast potato dish for breakfast! Can you believe it?”

“Robin!” came a shout from upstairs. Both Robins turned to listen. “Yeah?” they replied simultaneously. They could hear Jason laughing. “My son Robin! Don’t forget to feed the horses! Anna will be handling the chickens!”

“Right, I should do that!” Rob already rushed to exit the house, but the spirit managed to stop him. “I fed them already,” she said shortly. Rob cheered: “Less work for me!” He returned to the kitchen to watch the potato dish.

☯

Robin had never thought that living with two human children and a middle-aged man could be such an invaluable experience. She truly felt as if she was a part of the family from day one. She was never a guest, she skipped that stage long ago. She had to help out with chores and gardening as well as cooking, she had to be present at family dinners, she had to take part in any other family activities such as going to the market and she had a curfew. Jason said it was because the kids needed a good example because Robin always had to go to sleep when the kids did, but since Jason knew she was awake most nights, he didn’t mind when Robin went out to the garden as soon as the kids were asleep.

In the few weeks Robin spent in the house, she managed to also pick up some reading skill. As soon as Anna had heard that Robin couldn’t read, she wouldn’t let the matter go and started giving Robin lessons. As she put it: “Everyone needs to be well educated!” Robin didn’t have the courage to argue either so she just sat there and took the lessons the brunette girl offered her. All in all, Robin couldn’t complain. She did learn to read pretty well and had no complaints about Anna’s teaching methods: books about nature. What Robin wasn’t that happy about was the fact that she had asked of Jason that morning: “How long do foxes live?” The answer was a disappointing average of four years, meaning that Fluff was most probably chasing mice in the clouds instead of the forest either way. Robin spent a couple of days sulking after the revelation. She never forgot, she just didn’t show it out as intensively after that.

The market was odd for Robin. She had only been to one in the city next to her forest.  _ “Neoma! Remember the name Robin! Remember the name!”  _ This market was much smaller. It wasn’t on a big town square or anything. Instead, it was more a gathering of the nearby farmers and residents in a random dirt area, all trading goods and currency alike for various products like meat, milk, butter, eggs, fabric, wool, clothing items and other similar things. Everyone who came had a product of their own to sell, with Jason selling off eggs and apple jam, as he had mentioned when he had shown Robin the pantry.

All in all, Robin’s weeks had been eventful, but now it was time to yet again depart. Not that she liked it. She had already parted from Jason once and she hadn’t seen him for 11 years - not that it was her fault! Robin was scared to never see Jason again after that. On the other side of things, she had the chance to see Mona and Nyx in the event that she did bump into them. Jason had also told him about where Firo lived - she even wrote down the location as a writing exercise! Yes, Robin’s handwriting was terrible and legible only to her and barely to Anna, but it had to count for something! So she had the chance to also find Firo and see what he was researching, though Jason doubted he would tell her much.

Anna and Rob were climbing onto their horses, trying it out with their new armour and weapons for the first time, when Robin reached to give Jason a hug. “Thanks,” she haid with a smile, keeping her sadness in as to not worry the human any more. He had run around for her more than she would like already. “Keep an eye on Robin and Anna for me,” Jason responded quietly. As the two kids left the gate of the property, Robin ran after without looking back. She had a journey ahead of her and that’s what she focused on for now.

The first couple of minutes all three of them didn’t say anything. Anna was the one to break the awkward silence by humming a now already familiar song. Robin had heard it every day on their travels and decided that she had nothing to lose by humming along with Anna. Since Robin was walking behind Anna’s horse she couldn’t see her expression, but she had an odd feeling that Anna was now smiling. And so, the trio headed towards the capital.

☯

Robin liked the quiet evenings she enjoyed with Anna and the human Robin. The three of them sat around the campfire they made for that night in the dark, eating whatever they had cooked for today, with nobody saying a thing. She could look up at the sky in peace without anyone disturbing her or she could just think her own thoughts. Which is why it surprised her when Rob spoke up: “Hey, Robin? How old are you?”

“Thirty- Wait, no, add eleven to that- Forty two years, I think. Might be more or less than that since I haven’t been able to count winters,” she responded, turning to look up at the stars. Yes, that number made sense.

“What? You look like a teenager!” Rob exclaimed.

“A human teenager,” Robin corrected. “Since I’m not human, my age and looks proportions aren’t either. For spirits, I’m pretty sure, this is the norm.”

“Why just pretty sure?”

“Because I have never met another spirit before,” Robin answered and let herself fall back into the grass, avoiding any further eye contact. Rob took the hint that it was a sore subject and let it be. Robin didn’t move from her spot for the following hour, thinking about what other forest spirits might be like. It was a thin chance that she ever might meet one in the first place since forest spirits didn’t usually leave their forest. But it was one of Robin’s secret dreams - to meet another forest spirit. Somebody who could understand her, just as Edhyr had. 

Robin fell asleep and for the first time in several weeks finally managed to slumber without waking up halfway into the night.

  
  



	8. New adventures

“Finally! I can see the city wall!” Rob exclaimed happily, pointing to the horizon where, indeed, a tall wall could be seen. Robin didn’t like this wall; it looked hostile. Compared to the other two cities in walls that she had seen, this one was cold and unforgiving. The wall of Neoma was accepting and protective, the wall of the city with the overly complicated name was also protective, though harsh. But this wall… This wall was unforgiving, cruel and powerful above all. No, Robin didn’t like it one bit.

“Do we have to go inside the wall?” she asked Rob. To her relief, he shook her head. “The city is so huge that only the royal family and some bigger merchants can afford to live in the walls. Most of the city is outside it, protected by a moat filled with water. That’s where we are headed!” he explained swiftly. Robin nodded. It made sense that only richer people could live inside the walls with protection. Human society was built that way. “What’s our first stop there? We should be in the city within the hour,” she continued, curious to see where exactly they were headed.

“The Adventurer’s Guild of course! We’ll get a cool quest and help out the guild!” Rob declared. Anna cheered along: “Yeah! We’ll help out tons, no doubt!” Robin wasn’t so sure about that but she allowed the kids the moment of the doubt. “Sure. You do know where the guildhouse is, right?” The two humans instantly quieted down and averted their gazes. Robin sighed. It was going to be an exhausting day.

They arrived in the supposed town not too long after that little conversation. None of them had any idea where anything was so Robin was forced to ask locals which way the Adventurer's Guild was. It took her a couple people to realize why everyone was giving her looks - not necessarily hostile ones, but definitely curious glances. She had forgotten to pull up her hood. She knew that just a couple months ago she would never have allowed that to happen, but it looked like she was comfortable enough around humans to not start panicking about reactions an hour before reaching a village now. Robin, proud of her achievement, decided to try out how long she could go in public without pulling up the hood of her coat.

It took quite a few people but finally, after twenty minutes of asking around, they located the Adventurer’s Guild building! Mostly thanks to Robin, but Rob and Anna weren’t about to admit that. They tied Poppy and Thunderbolt to the small stable outside, clearly meant for public use, and headed into the tall white building. It stood out, to say the least, from the norm of single-floored wooden houses around the town with its three floors, white stone walls and beautiful engravings decorating the entire building. Robin especially liked the stone lizards on the windowsills near the entrance.

The inside was just as fancy as the outside of the building. The floor was made of dark wooden panels but the walls were the same white stone as the outside. A giant desk was seen on the left and a questboard bigger than the one in Neoma by far, spanning almost the entire wall next to the door. People were crowded next to the board - it was rush hour for adventurers it seemed -, everybody looking for a suitable quest for them or their party. Rob decided to first check into the guild and walked over to the giant desk that several workers were behind, all handling paperwork of some sort and giving out quests. The trio took the first free person near the door, a blond female with shoulder-length hair. “Welcome to the Adventurer’s Guild! How may I assist you today?” she greeted them with a smile. 

“We’d like to update our guild cards and register a temporary party,


	9. Of rivers and dragons

er why he wanted me to sit next to you,” Robin thought out loud. Slate agreed with a hum: “I wonder, too. Sometimes I forget that dragons are mythical and ancient creatures. You never know what’s going on in their head.”

“Indeed.” Robin and Slate spent a few more minutes in silence, both throwing looks at Nalin. The dragon was now lying under the giant tree with his eyes closed, resting. Slate was the one to slide a bit further away from Robin to make room for himself to lie down on the ground. “Forgive me, but I’m still tired from hopping into a freezing cold river,” he muttered as an excuse. Robin snorted. “Not that you hopped on your own volition, dummy. I’ll be going then.” Robin stood up, ready to leave. “If I see a squirrel on my way back, I’ll kill it, that alright with you?” she questioned just in case. Slate just nodded and then closed his eyes just as Nalin had, his palms coming up to cover his face from view. Robin lingered for a second to ponder about Slate’s odd pose for sleeping and then walked off to the direction she remembered the human city to be, keeping an eye out for squirrels. She wasn’t sure when she would make it and if the Sun would already have set by then so it would be easier to catch a squirrel early on without having to worry about it later and in the dark and strange forest.

☯

Robin entered the Adventurer’s Guild without a squirrel. She took a quick detour and posted the quest back on the board before she went to claim the rewards for the mayleafs and riverstone that she had collected in the forest. “I’d like to redeem two quest rewards," she declared to the worker behind the counter, who quickly dove for some sort of parchment scroll. “Adventurer name and quest name?” the woman asked her. Robin pulled out the handful of plants from her pocket and fiddled around a bit longer with the so-called riverstone which was actually a dragon scale. “Robin Woods, quests were for a riverstone and some mayleaf plants.”

“I see you’ve also taken on a quest for a squirrel, did you not manage to complete it?”

“No, I posted it back on the board for others to take. I couldn’t find any in the forest, hopefully others have better luck,” Robin explained quickly. The worker nodded and took a quill to cross out the squirrel quest from under Robin’s name. She took the plants and headed over to the scale propped up further behind the counter to check the amount. She came back and took the riverstone from the table also. “I’ll be back in a minute,” the worker said, heading somewhere to the back rooms to withdraw the total reward amount. Robin just stood around, waiting for the young woman to return.

She came back with a small fabric bag about the size of Robin’s palm. “Here you go! We hope you return!” she said, handing it to Robin. The spirit took the bag with a small nod. “Thanks.” She left without further communication with humans and headed over to the inn where Anna, Rob and her were staying at. She should probably also feed Poppy and Thunderbolt again. With her thought already lingering on the horses, Robin headed over to the public stable nearby. Carrots were sold on the spot, after all, she had no need to go to the marketplace.

The stable wasn’t big, but it looked enough to fit about eight horses, which was a considerable amount for a wooden shack of that magnitude. Poppy and Thunderbolt were assigned to rooms two and three, not that they were actual rooms, more like compartments. The whole thing cost five silver coins per every hour for a single horse, which Robin found rather expensive but Rob hadn't even broken a sweat when the price was announced. The stable itself was separate from the office and shop side of the business, which was where payments were exchanged. Robin headed to the small shop to get some carrots for the two horses. 

It wasn’t a big shop, maybe the size of two regular market stalls. They sold all kinds of food for humans and horses alike and Robin was even tempted to buy some potatoes to make dinner from but decided against it after buying the carrots. The bag she was given at the Adventurer’s Guild held about 10, maybe 13 coins in total, with the majority of them being silver. Robin had no idea what the price ratio between the silver and golden coins was and so decided to not use up any golden ones in fear of being cheated. Robin paid a handsome six silver coins for two buckets of carrots. The shopkeeper was nice enough to offer help in getting the two buckets to the stables but Robin declined the offer as politely as she could. “No, I got this, thanks.” The shopkeeper looked between Robin’s tiny frame and the two carrot-filled buckets. “You sure? Those are pretty heavy.”

“I got this,” Robin repeated and lifted both buckets without much effort. She headed over to the stable with both her hands occupied with buckets. Thunderbolt and Poppy looked pretty excited in wait of a meal when Robin entered the stable. She put one bucket down in the hallway and started pulling carrots from the other one by one, reaching them over the gate keeping Thunderbolt in his own room. The horse took a bite out of the carrot greedily and in just a couple minutes the whole bucket was empty. Robin repeated the process with Poppy, though she was much calmer and pulled the whole carrot over the gate and to the floor before proceeding to eat it instead of biting off pieces. With two now empty buckets that didn’t weigh that much at all, Robin headed back to the shop to return them and maybe get a small snack. She left towards the inn with a green apple in her hand. Robin enjoyed the sunset colouring the sky a nice shade of pinkish orange.

The inn was pretty small, with the rooms being either singles or doubles. Anna wanted to get Robin her own room, but she refused and made it clear that they should buy one single room with two beds. Robin could handle herself on the floor by the window - she was used to sleeping on rough wooden surfaces anyway. Anna and Robin had no choice but to agree and so they had gotten a single room. The inn did offer breakfast, which Robin found handy since Anna and human Robin wouldn’t have to go out looking for food first thing in the morning. It had a small area where you could claim the food offered that day and the meals apparently changed every day according to the guy at the reception desk. Robin appreciated it since eating the same food every morning must be boring to humans. She herself wouldn’t have cared since she only ate once every couple of months to keep her heart beating at all - humans found it terrifying when what they thought was a dead body woke up from a nap casually. Robin had tried that out and she hadn’t particularly enjoyed the misunderstanding, though it might be a good way to avoid people disturbing her sleep - just play dead. She decided to see how long she could go until her skin changed to pure white and people started asking about it.  _ “It’s an interesting experiment. How fun!”  _ Technically she didn’t even have to eat at all. She only started to do so when she wandered to town the first time ever and people were utterly confused why a child that looked already dead was walking around the city. People had asked her when she had last eaten and were horrified when she said she didn’t remember ever eating at all. Robin snorted to herself as she remembered the people screaming that she was a demon. She was nowhere close to one! Now that she looked in her late teens and not like a seven-year-old human it might be a different reaction and Robin wanted to know what it would be. A little experiment from the sidelines! How entertaining. 

Robin entered the inn, chuckling under her breath as continuously more hilarious interactions with humans popped into her mind. She continued chucking all the way to her room, attracting a couple odd looks from the receptionist and the people she came across in the hallway, but Robin didn’t mind. She just wanted to see if Anna or Rob was back by now, since it was getting darker and darker outside.

Robin was surprised to find the door to her room locked. A couple stronger tugs on the doorknob confirmed it - neither of the humans was yet back.  _ “Who even has the key? Rob? Or Anna? Ah, Sora.”  _ With small grumbles, Robin headed back outside. She should be able to find her own door’s window from the outside and she was pretty sure that Anna had left it open to air the room before they left in the morning. Robin walked right past the receptionist and outside a little bit before turning around to slide her gaze over all the windows on the second floor, where their room was. She found three open windows of all the around ten that there were in total, Robin was too lazy to count them all, it didn’t matter. She quickly ran through the journey to their own room in her mind from this perspective and determined the correct window. With a nod to herself complimenting her on her smarts, Robin crouched down in a stance, ready to jump up to the windowsill and hopefully climb in this way. She wasn’t going to wait for one of the kids to show up just to discover that the other had the key to the room! With a well-aimed hop, Robin managed to indeed reach high enough to grab a hold of the windowsill. A couple yells reached her ears, but she ignored the distractions in favor of reaching her goal.

Robin managed to pull herself up and through the window, which was propped up with a small haircomb and left just enough room for the forest spirit to fit through. She landed on the floor face first with a thump. With a small groan, Robin stood up and went to wait for the two humans on one of the beds. She could hear footsteps behind the door, passing their room entirely. Robin lied down in wait of footsteps that would stop at their door. To her delight, she only had to wait a couple more minutes until somebody started fiddling with the lock on the door. It opened with a small creak and all of Robin’s joy disappeared as fast as it had come - neither Anna or Rob was standing in the doorway. It was the receptionist!

“Can I help you?” Robin asked, sitting up on the bed she had been lying on. The receptionist looked at her from head to toe. “You came in through the window?” he asked. Robin just nodded with a confused stare. What was he getting at?

“So you broke in here?” Robin took a few seconds to actually realize what she was being accused of. “Oh, no! This is the room that I and my fellow adventurers took for a couple nights. They just haven’t arrived back yet and I didn’t have the key so I came in through the window instead of the door,” she explained hastily, trying to make sure that she was making sense to the receptionist. “May I see your adventurer certificate as proof of your identity?” he asked. Robin grabbed it from behind her ear with a nod and handed it over to the male human. “Come with me,” he continued and walked back out of the room. Robin followed, not really knowing why she was even doing so. The young man headed to the reception desk and fished a roll of parchment out from underneath the counter. He quickly read through it and checked Robin’s guild card as well. “Alright, you’re in the list. I’m sorry for the disturbance but security is a top priority for us!” he declared, handing the card back to Robin with a small bow. Robin gave a quick thanks and headed back to her room, not worrying about the locked door anymore since it had been unlocked by the receptionist boy. Robin headed back to the window and decided to close it now that it was getting colder outside. She couldn’t help but feel a pang of worry at the two humans.  _ “What if they got hurt or lost? I’d have to go find them.”  _ Robin sat on the bed for quite a while, waiting for either to come back. It got dark outside, the Sun having dropped below the horizon. The moon was beautiful as ever along with the stars, but due to the light from different windows in the town, Robin couldn’t see the small flashing lights in the sky all that well.

Robin was thinking way too hard about this. Both Anna and Robin were quite independent and had done just fine on adventures by themselves. They didn’t need a forest spirit worrying about them! Robin convinced herself they were fine. They had to be, right?  _ “But what if something did happen? You’re just sitting here, useless, while one of them might be on the verge of death. Why else would they be out so late after sunset?”  _ a voice in Robin’s head whispered. Robin was inclined to agree and a wave of panic washed over her.  _ “What if they ARE in danger after all? What if-”  _ Robin couldn’t overthink it any more because the door to the room creaked open. Robin jumped up and dashed over. To her joy, it was Anna! And Robin as well! Both of them had come back together! She probably hadn’t managed to hide her smile of pure joy since Rob gave her a funny look. “Why so happy? Missed us?” he teased. Robin cleared her face to be neutral again. “A little,” she admitted, looking at the wall next to the door. “Why were you gone for so long?” she questioned, voice stern. Anna walked into the room quickly, Robin following after her and closing the door behind him. “Well,” Anna started, “I lost track of time and only realized at sunset how late it was. I had no idea where either of you were so I went to check at the guildhouse. Neither of you were there so I decided to just come back on my own and meet you back here. I met Robin on the way,” she explained. Robin nodded. “It just took me a while to get back. I was all the way by the edge of the wall.”

“What is it that you wanted to try out?” Robin asked the human, actually curious to know why Robin spent so long by the wall and what he was doing. The male immediately got jumpy. “Well, uh… I wanted to see… Something. And I needed to try out some stuff-”

“What did you want to see?” Robin pushed. Anna nodded along enthusiastically. “What was it?” she added. The blond stayed quiet for a few seconds before muttering very quietly: “I wanted to see if it was climbable.”

“You wanted to what?” Robin asked to make sure she heard right. Anna just looked confused. “I couldn’t hear what you said,” she complained with a pout. “I wanted to see if it was climbable!” he repeated. Anna tilted her head to the side. “But why?”

“Because of security reasons. If it was indeed climbable, anybody could just climb over the wall and bypass all the security set up to protect everyone inside!”

“That is true but do you really think someone might be able to climb it so nobody else sees-” Robin said, mind already racing to think of the possibilities.

“During the nighttime, it is possible,” Rob argued. “I wanted to make sure everyone was safe!”

“So you, what, tried to climb the wall the whole day?” Robin asked. Rob didn’t reply. “Wait hold on, you actually did try to do that, didn’t you?” Robin continued with a snort. Anna joined in on the laughing too. Just the mental image of Rob repeatedly falling from a small height made Robin giggle. “Not funny!” Rob protested, waving his hands. “I did it to help!”

“Sure you did. And I did it to help the two of you,” Robin swiftly changed the topic and pulled out the small fabric bag given to her at the Adventurer’s Guild. Anna hurried to peek inside. “This is a good amount of money! Did you do quests?” she asked Robin upon her discovery. Robin nodded. “I managed to do two quests in the forest. And I also fed Poppy and Thunderbolt this evening. Now, have you two eaten?” Robin continued. Anna nodded whereas Rob shook his head shyly. “I didn’t think about that,” he admitted, head ducked low in embarrassment. Anna just giggled. “Well, I’m tired!” she declared. “I’m heading to bed!” Robin nodded along. “You do that. I’ll go find Rob some food. Actually, Rob, you can wait here with Anna. I’ll be right back.” Robin grabbed the bag of coins from the floor and swiftly exited the room before Rob could protest against being left alone with Anna.

Since it was already dark outside, Robin doubted any market stalls or shops were open anymore. The only place she figured would be were taverns, where humans went to socialize in the evenings. Robin wandered around town quite a bit before she found one. She cautiously opened a door and made sure nobody was near it before stepping inside the cramped room filled with the scent of alcohol and fried potatoes. Robin hurried to the counter, looking for an employee to order food from. She spotted one waitress-like girl walking around with a small tray, handing out drinks and set her steps that way. “Excuse me?” Robin asked politely. The girl looked her over before replying. “Aren’t you a tad bit young to be here this late?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. Robin brushed the comment off - it wasn’t important right now. She was internally happy that she hadn’t even commented on her antlers at all. “I’d like some food, where can I order some?” With a small sigh, the waitress nodded. “What do you want? And make it quick.”   
  


Robin had no actual idea what the tavern served other than the smell of roast potatoes in the air so that’s what she settled for. “A portion of roast potatoes, but could you give it to take with me? Kind of in a hurry.”

“So am I, kid. So am I,” the waitress muttered with another nod before walking off to where Robin assumed the kitchen was. Robin decided to spend her time near the counter in case she was called upon and stood by the wide table, thinking her own thoughts and ignoring the noise filling the room. The waitress returned a little while later and handed Robin a plate of roast potatoes. “That’s six silver coins and one gold coin for the plate. Bring back the plate and you’ll get your gold coin back,” she said in an uninterested voice. Robin handed over the payment and thanked the girl before heading back to the inn to give Rob his dinner.


	10. Wooden Wind

“I’ll let you guys choose today,” Robin decided, nodding at Anna and Rob. The three of them decided to spend today doing quests as well, to help out the guild. Since Robin had been picking quests up until now, she decided to let the kids have their pick this time. She, of course, regretted it almost immediately when Robin came back waving a quest for killing some sort of creature in the swamp, being really proud of himself. Anna, fortunately, was more reasonable and came back with a quest for a four-eyed fish located at the now already familiar river in the forest. Robin was actually happy to do that one. Wooden Wind set off to the forest first as per Robin’s request. Robin walked on the pathway with her head high, keeping an eye out for Nalin and Slate in case they show up again - Robin still wanted to make sure the dive didn’t have any long-term effects.

The birds were chirping and singing in the distance. No bugs were flying about anymore, it was too cold for them. The closer they got to their destination, the louder the sound of water flowing got. Anna got distracted by flowers and other plants a couple of times during their journey, while Rob ran off chasing some animal he said he heard. Robin had to pull them out of the bushes a couple of times before they even made it to the river. When they finally did make it, Rob almost immediately ran off knee-deep into the water with no regard for how cold it was or how wet his clothes would get. Robin was forced to pull him out when he started saying that he couldn’t feel his toes just ten seconds in. Not bothering to start making a fire, Robin just used a spell to set her own hand aflame and used that to warm up Rob again. Anna stayed quiet the whole time and didn’t dare venture too far from Robin. Robin hadn’t stopped muttering about the river being deadly this time of year until Rob looked like he was about to cry - Robin didn’t want to be that harsh as to make a child cry, but he really did have to realize what he did wrong. She figured he wasn’t going to jump into a river anytime soon.

When Rob was well enough to go running off in search of the fish they had to catch again, Robin advised them to split up in two directions and meet back up in the middle in twenty minutes. And so Robin was split off from the humans yet again, walking downstream while the two humans waltzed upstream. Robin still wanted to find Slate again but had no idea how far she could make it and if she would be fast enough to make it to Slate’s tree and back before time ran out. 

“BOO!”

“SORA!” Robin cursed as she turned around and crouched to a fighting stance, hands at the ready and sharp rocks already flying up from the ground, ready to attack. “Woah! Woah! Easy! It’s just me! Slate!” Sure enough, slate was standing in front of Robin with his hands in the air as a sign of surrender. Robin dropped the sharp rocks back to the ground and stepped closer. Slate dropped his hands and smiled. “What brings you back here?” he asked. Robin didn’t smile in return, instead scowling. “I forgot to mention it, but if you ever do something so stopid again you won’t be allowed to explore anymore,” she said almost casually. Slate paled at the threat, clearly not wanting to lose his freedom. He nodded hastily and Robin continued:“To answer your question, I’m here for a four-eyed fish.”

“Quests again? I thought you didn’t do those.”

“Robin and Anna decided to and I’m helping them,” Robin explained curtly. “Where’s Nalin?” she continued, noting the absence of a giant lizard. Slate shrugged and replied: “He hangs out alone sometimes. Today seems to be one of those times.” The two spirits stood in silence for a couple seconds, listening to the water flowing. “Well, I’ll head back then,” Robin decided. She had nothing else to really say to Slate since she had delivered her planned warning, but deep down she didn’t want to leave just yet. “I’ll come with you. I have nothing better to do right now. I never do,” Slate said nonchalantly.

“Is that why you jumped into a river?” Robin teased with a smirk creeping onto her face.

“Shut up.” Robin did so and started walking back upstream, back to the point where she had split up from Anna and Rob. Slate followed loyally, not falling further than three steps behind. The two spirits made it back before either of the humans had returned. “Well,” Robin said as she sat down on the ground. “I guess we have time now. Keep an eye out for that fish.” Slate followed her example and the pair stared at the water in search of a four-eyed fish swimming by.

“Robin, who’s this?” Robin heard a familiar voice ask. It was Anna! And human-Robin was probably with her. They had returned from their trip upstream! “Oh, this is Slate. He’s the local forest spirit,” Robin introduced him. Slate nodded and waved a greeting. “Nice to meet you. Robin’s been talking about you.”

“And how do you know Slate?” Rob questioned. “Met him yesterday,” Robin replied nonchalantly, not wanting to go deeper into detail. “While doing the quests?” Rob questioned anyway. Robin just nodded. “He does live here, after all.”

“Will he help us catch that fish?”Anna questioned.

“Sure,” Slate agreed. “Why not?” The four of them headed closer to the river and spread out to make sure they had it covered. They sat there for quite a while, waiting to see one of those four-eyed fish. Rob was first to spot one swimming closer. “Here it comes!” he whispered loudly. Anna raised her hand in signal for Robin, who was last in line and planned to catch the fish using some magic - none of them wanted to repeat what had happened earlier and get wet and cold again. Thus, Robin was ready with her signature razor sharp rocks gently hovering near her, aimed at the water. “Now!” Anna signalled and Robin set the rocks flying into the water. The fish splashed for a few seconds but it didn’t last long against the barrage of attacks sent its way. Slate managed to manipulate the waterflow enough to get the fish closer to shore and the squad captured it successfully.

“Hey, Robin?” Anna approached the spirit. “Yes?” Robin questioned. “What is it?”

“Are you going to live here now?”

“What?”

“Well, you remember when we first met you?” Anna reminded her.

“What about it?”

“I told you that you would need a new forest to call home. I think you’ve found it.” The two girls turned to look at the boys - the other forest spirit and the blond human messing with the fish by the riverside a little bit further. They were both laughing loudly at some joke Rob had made. Robin smiled, thinking about her old forest and comparing it to this one. Slate had said that he would be happy to share it, after all... “I think you might be right,” she murmured in response.

“We will stay at the capital with brother for a week or so before heading on to our next location. You have time to decide if you want to stay. This isn’t far from our home either so it isn’t trouble to visit you and that dragon lives here so you have a new friend too. If I were you, it wouldn’t even be a question. I’d definitely stay here.”

“I’ll think about it. Go back with Robin and don’t let him do anything stupid,” the spirit replied with a borderline sad smile. “I think I’ll try out life in the forest again for a little bit. If I’m not back with you in five days, you know my answer.”

“Of course. I hope you had fun travelling with us.”

“I wouldn’t say that- Looking after Rob was a headache all alone,” Robin laughed. Anna agreed: “I think I know why! Look!” She pointed at the two guys now sitting by the river. Both of the girls could see Rob’s hand scooping water from the river. The blond splashed the freezing cold water at the green-haired spirit, who started protesting loudly and fighting back. “I think it’s just a boy thing,” Anna suggested. Robin was inclined to agree after yesterday’s troubles when Slate had jumped into the river.

That night, Robin stayed in the forest with Slate and slept by the giant pine tree with him and Nalin. The night was chillier and the air was crisp cold, but Robin enjoyed it. It truly reminded her of her life in her old forest. She decided to spend the few following days there too, but deep down she knew that the decision was already made. She would stay here, with Nalin and Slate, to keep balance in this new forest next to the capital city of the human country. Anna and Rob could visit her and she could venture out to Jason’s house if she started missing the old adventurer.

_ “This isn’t that bad at all,”  _ she thought, looking at the stars shine in the sky. Robin kept her eye on her favourite constellation - the fox - as she drifted off to sleep and dreamt about her new and improved life in this forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been an amazing journey to say the least. I hope you enjoyed thus work and if you did, leave a kudos, it really helps to get it out there. It took some time but this is my first ever completed work. I'm proud and I thank you deeply for reading it and giving it a chance.


End file.
